|
About Hopki Media and how I got hear. Back in 2003, after an accident which left me with an above knee right leg amputation, as well as a broken arm and various other bits, life got a bit weird to say the least. Before the accident I was very active, running training courses for fax, copier and printer engineers, mainly on Saturdays. Running a cabling team installing Cat5e structured cabling for computer networks and phone systems. Then on Sundays teaching CBT to new motorcyclists. During the week I ran a Tech support help desk to support engineers out in the field as well as going out to help them with problem machines. I almost forgot to say, I also built a mobile communication and fax solution for the Fire and Rescue and Police services. Determined not to let this slight hiccup cause to much of a problem I started looking at alternative projects. It was then a friend approached me and asked if I could build a virtual tour of some show homes, wooded kit houses. I started to get into this early 2007, then boom, the crunch and the bottom fell out of the property market. However I was getting good at this and then just by chance other photographers started to approach me, if they took the pictures could I build the tour? At about the same time I found Garden Gnome Software, software that lets you output the tour in Flash and has a Skin Editor which lets you design your own user interfaces. Working with Garden Gnome Software I started to make downloadable training packs for their software, Pano2VR and Object2VR. So this is where we are today, I still make my own 360 panoramas and objects, but also build the tours for others. As well as having the Skin Factory selling the training packs. I have not made this journey alone, and have many people to thank, first my wife and family, sticking by me in some really harsh and difficult times. Colchester hospital that put me back together after many months in hospital following my accident. The limb Centre at Harold Wood, getting me up and running with my very cool prosthetic leg, and not forgetting Paul, Brain, Debby and Thomas. Martin Hopkins |