Google Building Maker?
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This is good news, as it means SketchUp will no longer be seen as just a tool to make Google Earth buildings.
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@solo said:
Googles evil plan revealed...
Get folk to popultae the earth with 3d models of existing buildings, then create a 3d navigation tool to advertisers locations, now you have a completely virtual yellow pages for the entire world.
Sit back and rack the cash (or hire folk to do it for you)
I have thought the same since the day Google bought SU.
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There is actually a great use for this for entities that want to model entire cities. Their work gets a little easier now because they "just" need to take/buy oblique imagery, submit it to Google and then can use this tool. Apparently this is what they used to do cities like Vancouver (recently released on GEarth).
One drawback is still the quality for "showcase buildings" - and that's where SketchUp is still needed.
Cheers,
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Hi folks.
And lets hope that they organise the shadows.
The weather channel (Meteomedia)here in Quebec, uses what looks like Google Earth. If you look carefully at some of the picture they use, the one for Ottawa is more than evident, you will see that the shadows used for different buildings are pointing in different directions. This is far from elegant.
Just ideas.
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Interesting. The concept of matching a selection of primitives to a photograph seems to be taken directly from the old Metacreations program...Canoma. It was very easy to use and extremely effective. There are quite a few examples of it on Youtube. It was bought by Adobe and promptly killed off....although I think they are using bits of it in CS3.
I still have a copy somewhere. -
surely you can't get the quality of buildings that you can through using sketchup?.....
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Second life? no... Google Life...
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Today I have wasted some of my time with this tool, for curiosity, and I believe that I am not going to do anything more with it. The limits of this tool, for me, are visible in this model of the Royal Palace of Madrid I have made. You can't achive more accuracy.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=91e51167b463b3e2d63477c89a315b2e
Edit: You can compare with a serious model uploaded today, too, of the same palace, made with Sketchup 7
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=e9251c360d3ee94d3acca2328265f220
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I am undecided yet whether this is a good thing for Sketchup or not....
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As a "geo-modeler", I think it is a new, second step to populate GE. After they have bought Sketchup and wanted people to fill the virtual world completely with buildings, there is still not at least 1% of all 2 billion buildings modeled. Many geo-modelers concentrate on high quality, also many concentrate on masses of low quality. But anyhow, using Sketchup takes a bit much of time, especially for getting resources. So this is a great tool and chance for Google Earth. At least for box houses (I myself feel lucky not to live in a box
)The quality might be bad, but for the normal GE perspective (ie. 100m distance), it's perfect (and low model complexity!). I still wonder what should encourage me to built now hundreds/thousands of low quality models, which can be efficiently done by automatic techniques. Especially the selection of prepared towns looks like what the machines have left.
Although they said, it won't replace Sketchup, I have the impression that they will finally abandon geo-modeling as a main purpose of Sketchup. That could mean good news for architects and all other Sketchup users. Sketchup could develop into something more professional.
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@unknownuser said:
Interesting. The concept of matching a selection of primitives to a photograph seems to be taken directly from the old Metacreations program...Canoma. It was very easy to use and extremely effective....It was bought by Adobe and promptly killed off....although I think they are using bits of it in CS3. I still have a copy somewhere.
I unearthed an old demo I had of Canoma last year and had a little play after it was mentioned on the forum. It was no match for SU but having just played with Google Building Maker which is a clear copy, it is good to see the simplicity of Canoma hasn't been completely forgotten. I'd maybe use it for modelling background buildings quickly but I'll leave it for some other altruistic soul to build a whole city.
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@kwistenbiebel said:
I am undecided yet whether this is a good thing for Sketchup or not....
Are you hoarding SketchUp installers yet?
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So I'm not the only one with an installer archive?Although Sketchup as a professional modeler does absolutely not fit into Googles profile, I wonder if they would really give it away. Sure, is not anymore essentially needed for Google Earth. But after years of only little touch on @Last's product, the Sketchup team has begun to develop things deep in the core of the program. I have the impression it will be useful to Google again someday.
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i promisse to use this the next time i model for Google Earth...
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This works much better for very quick, very rough models, but there's still clearly a place for high quality models made with SU.
When I talk with people about my interests one of the first is making 3D buildings with Sketchup. Most people have no idea what Sketchup is and only a few people know what Google Earth is. If Google Earth is quickly populated with low quality Building Maker buildings, more people will get to know about GE and the spin-off products and use it. The increased visibilty of GE will mean an increased demand in higher quality models. That will mean higher demand for SU.
There's no way that Google will get rid of SU.
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Hear hear
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I also see it this way. It is obvious that a quantitative boost can only generate qualitative demand. When a couple of hundreds of people make buildings with SU all over the world (I mean in a bigger quantity now), GE will never get populated. There have always been "grey block" cities (i.e. low quality) and similar - now the low quality will have a boost and some additional quality as far as basic texturing goes.
But it will eventually generate more interest in better 3D content.
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The way I see it, Google Earth is obsolete since G maps Streetview got mainstream (as said above).
I hardly ever use Google Earth but I very often use Maps. Why would I want to download an app (GE), if G Maps does a far more photoreal thing out of the box straight in my browser...?The logical evolution would be seeing technology developed that extracts 3D from both street view input combined with the satellite top view....automatically.
The proof of concept is already there (ThomThom posted it somewhere).I really can't imagine the whole world being modeled by hand for Google Earth. It feels old fashioned, will never be completed and to be honest, the current low poly GE models very often look crap.
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I agree with Kwist and modelhead. Personally, I think the Google Earth 3D buildings community is...and always will be...decidedly niche. Obviously, I'm very aware of SketchUp and use Google Earth fairly extensively...but I hardly ever bother with the 3D building layer. Frankly, the 3D buildings just get in the way of reading the road names and other details. Street View is far more useful. Nor do I think that things will improve any when more buildings are available...in fact they will get worse.
Has anyone tried looking at Tokyo lately with 3D Buildings turned on? The darn city is still loading 10 minutes later, even on a broadband connection...and most of those buildings are just clay; can you imagine what it would be like if they were all mapped? -
@kwistenbiebel said:
The way I see it, Google Earth is obsolete since G maps Streetview got mainstream (as said above).
I hardly ever use Google Earth but I very often use Maps. Why would I want to download an app (GE), if G Maps does a far more photoreal thing out of the box straight in my browser...?The logical evolution would be seeing technology developed that extracts 3D from both street view input combined with the satellite top view....automatically.
The proof of concept is already there (ThomThom posted it somewhere).I really can't imagine the whole world being modeled by hand for Google Earth. It feels old fashioned, will never be completed and to be honest, the current low poly GE models very often look crap.
Have you seen Place Pages on Maps yet? You might reconsider the usefulness of geo-located 3d models. Check out this as an example: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14784564406270036321&q=cathedral%2Bdakar
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