Modelling for GE solely from Streetview
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Hiya,
Just wondering if any of you guys have modeled for GE using just streetview images?
I think it would be a fun thing to do, especially in towns which aren't your home town (variety is the spice of life and all that!) and obviously this can be used in conjunction with photos from the web and Bing maps birds eye view etc.
But just wondering what would be best to do for the faces that aren't shown via photographs/SV? Leave them blank? Make a good guess? I have seen buildings on the GE layer which have blank facades, but this looks a bit rubbish to my eye!
Thoughts appreciated!
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Hi Lee,
In my part of the world there is no Street View so I haven't cared much about this feature yet. It may be fun indeed - but have to confess I think not much more than fun. If you seriously want to model something for GE, you need to go there anyway, take your good photos (and of course photos of the back of the building you cannot see from the Street View, too) etc.
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When parts of the building is blocked by objects, refer to the birds eye view as it usually less obscured.
I'm doing a project now where I had the building volumes of a long street, and I wanted to draw in the windows and doors. I found that taking screenshot of the birdseye views and straightening them in Photoshop, mapping them to the model and tracing them worked fine. But that was just for the big features - the textures comes out as only ~200-300px - so not much details. But it does allow you to get the main features as a basic - where you can fill in more details as you need.And it also depends on what you're modelling for. Is it to build models for GE?
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Depending on the city, you might even find photos tagged for the correct location - GE allows you to discover these - as you probably know.
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Yeah, it's just to model for GE to have some fun, to take a break from modeling my own city. I have seen other models in GE with blank faces at the back of terraced houses for example (some houses in the famous Dursley project are like this) but as I said earlier, this doesn't look great, but are still on GE??
So, I guess finding buildings with 360 degree streetview (or as near as possible) in cities with a lot of photographs, good GE coverage and good birds eye views, then a reasonable model for GE could be achieved???
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@leedeetee said:
Yeah, it's just to model for GE to have some fun, to take a break from modeling my own city. I have seen other models in GE with blank faces at the back of terraced houses for example (some houses in the famous Dursley project are like this) but as I said earlier, this doesn't look great, but are still on GE??
So, I guess finding buildings with 360 degree streetview (or as near as possible) in cities with a lot of photographs, good GE coverage and good birds eye views, then a reasonable model for GE could be achieved???
The project we are working on uses a combination of Street View and other resources off the web to gather as much graphical and text information.
Here is the start of what I am working on. The top six models were done using the combination mentioned above.
And here is the project itself.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=271&t=25539
I will be doing most of the modeling with the above mentioned method, but will also rely on others who live in the locations some of the buildings are in. It really is fun to have to hunt for just the right amount of information to complete the model.
I guess we will see if Google like them!
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Hi Jax,
A very interesting project there and some very decent results too.
@jaxcoffee said:
It really is fun to have to hunt for just the right amount of information to complete the model.
I guess we will see if Google like them!This is the same thinking as me also, it really does sound fun, like a big jigsaw puzzle!
Thanks for the info, fodo for thought indeed.
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@leedeetee said:
Hi Jax,
A very interesting project there and some very decent results too.
@jaxcoffee said:
It really is fun to have to hunt for just the right amount of information to complete the model.
I guess we will see if Google like them!This is the same thinking as me also, it really does sound fun, like a big jigsaw puzzle!
Thanks for the info, fodo for thought indeed.
You are very welcome Leedeetee, and you are more then welcome to be part of our project if you need some real world experience in modeling using GE and Streetview. Go ahead and model some Carnegie's. We could use the help. It's Google's approval process that will tell you if you have done things right.
Models for our project are not added to the collection until they are approved, so model away!
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I just may do that, Jax.
I'll be sure to give your thread a good read!
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