Possible to import high quality terrain from Google Earth?
-
I'm looking at a golf course in Google Earth, it has really high quality terrain, but when I import it into Sketchup via Google Earth, it's REALLY low quality.
Is it possible to get the exact terrain data I see in Google Earth into Sketchup?
I'm using Sketchup 7 (the free version).
-
Hi Kamikaze,
First of all, make sure to set terrain quality to "highest" in GE Options.
Then the basic problem is that GE streams both the imagery and terrain data dynamically which means that in order to capture the whole golf course, you need to zoom out pretty much but then the terrain quality becomes poorer. The only way to get what's really been displayed from close-up is to zoom in to the details, take the snapshot, pan further, take another snapshot and continue doing this until you covered the whole area. Now you end up with a bunch of terrains that more or less cover each other and you may want to start intersecting and "uniting" them. Note that you will need to unlock and explode each terrain piece in order to do this but otherwise the whole process, though rather laborious, is viable.
-
The trouble is, that even when I'm zoomed in on Google Earth close enough to see detail, the quality of that same area when exported to SketchUp is degraded.
-
Max image size SU can import is 1024x1024 pixels (there might have been file size limitation too, check Google user guide).
Anything exceeds this limitation will be automatically reduced down to below that size upon being imported into SU. And SU does a kind of messy job on reducing.
So if you want to keep good quality of images you are going to import, first you have to break them down to below 1024 x 1024 pixels in some image editing software.reference; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyg0b9TYkVo
-
@takesh h said:
Max image size SU can import is 1024x1024 pixels (there might have been file size limitation too, check Google user guide).
Anything exceeds this limitation will be automatically reduced down to below that size upon being imported into SU. And SU does a kind of messy job on reducing.
So if you want to keep good quality of images you are going to import, first you have to break them down to below 1024 x 1024 pixels in some image editing software.reference; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyg0b9TYkVo
For normal images that isnt necessarily the case, you can go window->preferences->openGL->Use maximum texture size, and SU will use the largest textures your graphics card supports. Not sure if that also works with GE imports, though.
Thats in SU7, btw.
-
@remus said:
For normal images that isnt necessarily the case, you can go window->preferences->openGL->Use maximum texture size, and SU will use the largest textures your graphics card supports. Not sure if that also works with GE imports, though.
Thats in SU7, btw.
Oh I didn't know the trick, that is so good.
GE import resolution depends on your monitor size, as I understand.
So It cannot be awfully better than 1024x1024... in my case it came as 1500x1150.
From inside SU, this kind of difference is negligible. I couldn't see much improvments in image quality.But for any other image imports, this is great.
I just tested with a 2000x3000pix image and it looked (almost) just as good as it did in iPhoto.
Thanks for headsup. -
Guys, IO believe Kamikazee is talking about the Terrain (mesh) imported from GE, not the imagery. Valuable info about the imagery, too, however.
Advertisement