Renovating? App creates 3D floor plan of your home using AI

February 21, 2021

By Kim Komando

Planning an extension or renovations to your home? If so, you probably know how difficult it can be to measure the floor space accurately. Not using the right tools can cause you to miscalculate, costing you time and money.

Or, have you ever put your home up for sale but couldn’t fully capture how perfect it is with still photos? Tap or click here to find out the real value of your house for free. There is an easier way for all of that: technology and your smartphone.

Realty company Zillow has unveiled a new app that will generate 3D floor plans and home tours for you by simply uploading photos. The app uses still photos and Artificial Intelligence to create floor plans. Let’s take a look at how it works.

It’s for realtors, but you can use it too

The Zillow 3D Home Tours app was primarily developed for realtors and property photographers. It works by feeding panoramic photos and/or stills into Zillow’s machine learning tools. This creates an interactive 3D tour of your home, including AI-predicted room dimensions and square footage.

This is great if you want to list your property for sale and minimize the foot traffic into your house during viewings. Zillow app users can look at any house with a 3D tour and go through the property room by room.

Clicking on a specific room during the tour will take you right there and display relative dimensions. Zillow says this will give a more accurate sense of the home’s flow and space than what was possible before.

“We are redefining the virtual tour experience by using AI to break down the barriers between listing media — like photos and virtual tours — and listing data, such as square footage and room dimensions,” said Josh Weisberg, VP of Zillow’s Rich Media Experience team.

How the app works

You will be able to generate 3D floor plans once you have created a profile on Zillow’s website. You can also include a Zillow 3D Home tour on your listing for free, which will appear on Zillow and Trulia.

Once you have downloaded the app and signed into your profile, this is how to create your own 3D tour:

• Tap Start Capture.
• Select Use Camera.
• Choose the listing address of the home.
• Select the room you would like to capture first. Zillow suggests starting at the front door.
• Once inside, position yourself based on the recommendations for capturing rooms of different sizes.
• Position your phone vertically and hold it close to your chest.
• Zillow explained that there is no “Start” button for capturing. The way to do that is by lining up the phone icon with the row of white rectangles.
• Slowly turn to the right, following the yellow line until all the rectangles are captured.
• Continue to capture until the room is complete.

Remember, you must complete a full 360-degrees of capturing for it to work. If you missed a frame or moved too quickly, the app will tell you. To add more rooms to the tour, tap Add after the first panorama is complete.

The free Zillow 3D Home Tours app is only available in 25 markets now, but the company is planning on expanded functionality to more regions soon.