Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Useful updates to 3D Warehouse and Building Maker

The update to the 3D Warehouse we just released includes a couple of additions we think you'll like. If you've ever submitted a building for Google Earth and had it rejected because of a "Processing Failed" error, you've probably been a little confused. With this release, we've added more detail to the feedback: You should now have a section of your model's details page that describes why it didn't make it through the processing pipeline.

Some common ones include:
  • Too much geometry: You've modeled a building in more detail than we're able to use.
  • Corrupt image file: One of your photo-texture images isn't a valid JPG or PNG image.




In many cases, the information provided in the feedback section will be enough for you to identify the problem and fix it. Otherwise, we plan to release Help Center articles to walk you through the steps required to repair your model. We hope the additional feedback helps.

Additionally, we've made some changes to Building Maker to help fix a common texturing problem. Many of you have built models only to have them returned with an "Incomplete Texturing" feedback notice. You then take a closer look at the model and realize one or more of the faces are black. What happened? Usually, this problem occurs when the model hasn't been constrained in enough images. Building Maker will now check your model for these faces before you submit it, and warn you if the model needs additional constraints. No waiting!




Enjoy, and please (as always) let us know what you think.

Posted by Allison Floyd, 3D Warehouse Engineer
at

4 comments:

  1. GerdJanuary 27, 2010 at 5:09 PM

    That are indeed very useful changes, especially the very intelligent black face detector.

    Seeing your continuous improvements and the interest in "what we think" makes me very confident. So I wonder if/why you haven't yet found the problem reports/ feature requests in the Sketchup forum.
    One is the language mixup and the other one would be a very useful "decoration" of 3d-warehouse - the still missing favicon ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJanuary 27, 2010 at 5:27 PM

    finally. It was time. to solve these problems with the buildings (Buiding maker) I hate to see black textured models or in other cases you can not see anything just a box with a blurred imagen I always thought that (building maker)is just ruins the 3D Google Earth layer. they should have a special 3d layer or something. is a huge diference between models with Sketchup and Building Maker.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 28, 2010 at 8:15 AM

    Hi olaf,

    We're definitely reading the SketchUp forums. We've just got a longish list of features in the queue, so it takes a while for new ones to make it in.

    -- Allison

    ReplyDelete
  4. Incorrect EdJanuary 29, 2010 at 2:18 AM

    Now we need a patch fixing the annoying placement of the pins!
    Which are miles away from the model)

    ReplyDelete

You are welcome to contribute comments, but they should be relevant to the conversation. We reserve the right to remove off-topic remarks in the interest of keeping the conversation focused and engaging. Shameless self-promotion is well, shameless, and will get canned.