Method for modeling a small town for Google Earth

not registered yet

Just wondering about the best way to model a very small town for Google Earth...

First I thought, import the terrain with basically a view of the entire town ... most of the buildings fit and are visible from overhead with this view.

Then I started adding rectangles and pushing them up where the buildings existed. That worked out nicely and everything was very handy in one file.

But then when I want to Photomatching with one building, obviously I have all these other buildings floating around, and eventually the file size will get quite large and unwieldy.

Now it seems maybe it would make more sense to do each building separately, but then I lose the convenience of having them all in one file.

I've also thought, well, maybe a master terrain of the city and separate files for the buildings that i can then bring into my master.

Then of course there is the issue of uploading to Google Earth -- do I really want to be uploading an entire community as a file? Or should I be uploading each building?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Thanks,

Tom

P: TommyG

Masta Squidge

It might be easier to do, say, 4 buildings at a time than to try and do all of them in one model.

solo

Thanks James, I needed that too.

tomsdesk

Cool! Thanks James!

CraigD

Hi TommyG -

What you'd want to do is create a large terrain map model to start your buildings/city scape, and then save each of the buildings as separate .skp files for individual upload to 3D Warehouse for use in Google Earth.

Use descriptions for each building and save them in your own "Collection" in 3D Warehouse.

That should do it!

Cheers,

CraigD

not registered yet

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the help!

Tom

P: TommyG

not registered yet

@craigd said:

Hi TommyG -

What you'd want to do is create a large terrain map model to start your buildings/city scape, and then save each of the buildings as separate .skp files for individual upload to 3D Warehouse for use in Google Earth.

Use descriptions for each building and save them in your own "Collection" in 3D Warehouse.

That should do it!

Cheers,
 - CraigD

Hi Craig,

So I started messing with it based on your suggestion and am a bit confused as to how to proceed...

In order to get my town into a large terrain model as you suggest, I need to have a pretty high elevation in Google Earth before I do the capture. The imported terrain image is too pixelated to use at this point when I zoom in in Sketchup. Am I missing something here? Or is perhaps my town just too big for this method? Or maybe I need to zoom in and do a couple terrain captures and then perhaps stitch them together somehow in Sketchup?

Second, assuming I get that taken care of, once I have my large terrain map, what is the method between that and the single skp files you mentioned? For example, do I zoom in on the building sites in the large terrain map and pull them up into position, work on them to finalize them and then export them as skp files once I'm done? Or do I do a separate skp close-up terrain capture, do the building, export it as an skp and then import it back into place on my large terrain map? Or some combination of the above?

Thanks again,

Tom

P: TommyG

Gaieus

Tom,

I am planning to do something similar. What I'm thinking of is to model blocks (instead of individual buildings or the whole town altogether) for these blocks consist of individual buildings attached to each other (i.e. easier and more precise to work in this way).
Then you can upload them to the Warehouse one by one and when finally getting into the 3D Layer of GE, trhey will form the whole town.

If not that is the purpose (just a huge model in SU) you can still do the modelling in this way and yes, at the end you can "import" these individual blocks as components and assemble them in a big "master model".