⚡Quick start

Get up and running with Cozmos and Curator

Curator allows anyone to easily create and publish Sphere experiences, no coding knowledge is needed. This quick start guide explains everything you need to publish your first Sphere as quickly as possible.

Step 1: Create a Space and profile

If you don't already have one, you'll need a Cozmos profile and Space to start creating Spheres. You can either setup your own Space, or be added to existing Space by the owner of that Space.

Step 2: Upload image assets

Curator is where the magic happens, our simple drag and drop builder for Sphere creation. At a very basic level you'll need a Background and Image assets to get started.

Backgrounds

The Background is your 'environment', it gives context to your content and sets the scene for your experience. It's important to remember that a Sphere cannot be generated or published without a background so you'll need one before you publish your first Sphere

To learn more about how to create a background or to download one of our stock backgrounds go to the Backgrounds section of our knowledgebase.

Image graphics

Think of Curator as your 'play ground', you've created your visual assets and now you're going to import them to build your Sphere and bring them to live through 'Actions'

What's important to remember when prepping images for Sphere is our zoom mechanic. Your audience can experience incredible detail but only if your assets support it.

You can upload any resolution to use in Curator but quality will degrade the more zoomed in the Sphere is. Wherever possible we recommend uploading and using 8k imagery to truly take advantage of Sphere's immersive zoom.

Step 3: Create a Sphere environment

Now that you have your amazing background image and a selection of great assets to build your Sphere you need to create a Sphere environment.

Go the 'Spheres' in the Space left nav menu and click on 'Add Sphere', this button can be found in the top right if you already have Spheres in this space, or in the centre of the screen if this is your first Sphere.

You'll be asked to name your Sphere and select a domain if you have more than one. If you want your Sphere to published on all the domains connected to your Space then leave this option as 'All'.

The option to set this new Sphere as a Landing Sphere is related to how SEO works in Sphere. You can read more about that in our SEO guide. But don't worry, this can be edited at any time.

Step 4: Launch Curator

With your new Sphere created, select it from the list of Spheres and you will be taken to a new screen, this shows the 'state' of your Sphere, if it's in Draft or has been Generated or Published.

The settings option allows you to set Sphere specific settings, Curate will, as you may have guessed, launch Curator ;)

Step 5: Building in Curator

Well, this is certainly a big topic, so we suggest taking a look at the Curator section of the knowledgebase but at a basic level here is a quick flow:

• Use the '+' symbol to import data; images, backgrounds, text elements, video objects etc

• All objects have contextual menus and options, so with anything on the Curator canvas selected, take note of the right hand menu which appears

• '3D preview' allows you to see what your Published Sphere will look like (Note: Interactions don't work in preview)

• 'Setup' allows you to adjust the Start Point and Horizon for your Sphere

• 'Actions' allows you to add interactions to objects

• In the far right of the top Control Bar you will see our Sphere logo. This is where you Save and Generate.

• Click 'Generate' to build a 'hidden' version of your Sphere and preview it in the browser

Those are the basics and all you will need to get going.

Step 6: Publish!

You've built something incredible and can't wait to show the world! Your final step is to Publish. You do this from the Sphere page in your Space (the page you used to launch Curator)

If you have a Generated Sphere, you will see an option to Publish. This is the final step and makes your Sphere visible to anyone with the url.

Don't know where to start? Try using our templates!