Case study: Gorod-Park courtyard tour, ARCHIGROUP × Talan

Today we want to share one of the stories that remind us why we build VPano. ARCHIGROUP, an architecture firm based in Perm, has chosen our platform as its main tool for building tours from architectural renderings. The first large project the team released on VPano is a presentation tour of the courtyard of Gorod-Park, a new residential district in Izhevsk. The client is the developer Talan.

You can open the finished tour here: Gorod-Park courtyard tour

Who ARCHIGROUP are

ARCHIGROUP is a multidisciplinary architecture firm that has been working in real estate development for more than 14 years. The team covers four areas: architecture and urban planning strategy, a model-making workshop, architectural visualization, and public space design. Its portfolio includes more than 200 completed projects, 230 hectares of landscaping, 110 architectural models, 95,400 m² of interior design, and dozens of facade designs for residential complexes and public buildings.

The visualization department had long worked with still renderings, animations and mood films. Virtual tours were the logical next step: a rendering shows a single frame, while a tour shows the space, letting people move between viewpoints, look around and judge the scale the way they would on site. This is especially valuable for buildings that do not exist yet: a tour made from renderings lets you present a house or a courtyard months or even years before completion.

Why they chose VPano

Watch the video on Rutube (Russian narration)

The firm had a clear requirement: the tool had to be flexible enough for high-end architectural presentations, yet simple enough for the in-house visualization team to build and update tours on its own.

ARCHIGROUP evaluated several options and settled on VPano for these reasons:

• Image quality: panoramas load without visible loss, and tiled delivery keeps the picture sharp even on the large screens of a developer's sales office
• A fast editor: a tour with dozens of scenes and all its transitions can be put together in a single working day
• The firm's own branding: logo, a contact card, design themes and the firm's own name in the tour address
• Self-hosting when needed: a tour can be exported as a ZIP archive and hosted on the client's server (on request, a one-time USD 250 per tour; an active plan is required), which matters to large developers with their own IT infrastructure
• Direct support: our team is reachable and helps with any question

A project for national developer Talan in Izhevsk: the courtyard of the first building, "Kulturny", at Gorod-Park

Talan is one of Russia's largest developers, with a 24-year history. The company works in 12 cities from Vladivostok to Moscow, has built more than 3.6 million square meters of housing, and around 47,000 people live in its buildings today. Talan's approach is "for our home cities, with care for people": well-planned infrastructure, public spaces and comprehensive landscaping.

Gorod-Park is one of Talan's key residential projects in Udmurtia, located in the village of Oktyabrsky next to Yarushkinsky Park. The name says it all: the district is being built as a self-contained piece of the city, where the courtyard is not leftover space between buildings but a full public place with a life of its own.

ARCHIGROUP's task was to show future residents exactly that: what the courtyard will look like once the building is completed. Play areas, paths, small architectural features, planting, views of the facades: everything that is hard to convey with flat renderings or a site plan. Since the building is still under construction, the panoramas were not shot on site but created from architectural renderings. ARCHIGROUP's visualization team rendered spherical views from the 3D scene, and VPano linked them into an interactive virtual tour of the residential complex.

The result: a visitor opens the link on the developer's website, finds themselves inside the courtyard, can look around, move to another viewpoint and get a real sense of the place they are going to live in. Not "someday, from pictures", but right now, before the building is handed over.

What this means for the industry

When an architecture firm of ARCHIGROUP's caliber chooses a platform to present projects for a developer operating nationwide, it shows that virtual tours are no longer an "optional extra". They are a working sales tool for residential property, on a par with renderings and physical models.

This project is special for us because ARCHIGROUP is not a one-off client but a long-term partner. The firm keeps building new tours on VPano for its clients, and every project helps us shape the platform around the real needs of architecture and visualization studios.

Frequently asked questions

Can you make a virtual tour of a building that hasn't been built yet?

Yes. Spherical renderings from 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Corona or V-Ray are all you need. VPano turns them into an interactive tour with transitions between viewpoints.

Is VPano a good fit for an architecture firm or archviz studio working for clients?

Yes, that is exactly what the ARCHIGROUP case is about: the firm builds tours in VPano for its own clients, under its own brand and its own name in the address.

Can a large developer host the finished tour on its own infrastructure?

Yes. The tour can be downloaded as a ZIP archive and deployed on the developer's server, on a separate domain or inside a closed corporate network (on request, a one-time USD 250 per tour; an active plan is required). More in our article on ZIP export.

How long does it take to build a tour of this size?

With the renderings ready, assembling the tour itself (viewpoints, transitions, branding) takes one or two working days. Most of the time goes into the visualization, as in any architectural project.

If you work in architecture or real estate too

VPano works for a large firm with dozens of projects a year just as well as for an independent photographer or designer who makes a few tours a month. The logic is the same: upload panoramas or renderings, set up the transitions, apply your client's branding and send the link. No separate development team, no lengthy approvals.

If you want to try the platform on your own project, create an account and build your first tour. If you are an architecture firm or agency planning to work with tours on a regular basis, get in touch: pricing is available on request, and we will help you get started.

We thank the ARCHIGROUP team, and especially its visualization department, for their trust and for a project we are proud to show as an example of quality work on our platform.