Thursday, May 27, 2010

Use your own photos in Building Maker

Previously, Google Building Maker restricted you to using only our aerial images for your models. Today, we are happy to announce a new feature that allows you to upload your own photos for building creation - resulting in higher-detailed and more realistic building facades! The following images demonstrate how this new feature improves your building's appearance:

Watch this video to learn how to use this feature:



A new "Add your own photos" link will appear below the left image list after you have constrained three points of a block in at least two aerial images. Click on that link to upload your photos to a Picasa album, choose the photos for modeling, and specify the direction you were aiming when you took the photos. The new photos will appear in the image list.

Select one of these photos and adjust the block to fit. You must first adjust the block to fit (having added 7 points) before the Building Maker tools will be enabled. For further information refer to our user guide article.

There are also some example photos here for your experimentation. We hope you will have fun with this new addition!

Posted by Zhe Fan, Google Building Maker Team
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15 comments:

  1. milo minderbinderMay 27, 2010 at 2:15 PM

    I'm afraid Building Maker -users will outnumber Sketchup -users in Geo-modeling...

    ReplyDelete
  2. DRobbinsMay 27, 2010 at 2:26 PM

    That's pretty neat, but why do you still need to limit buildingmaker's coverage to only places that you have aerials from?

    -drobbins

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris PivikMay 27, 2010 at 2:42 PM

    I have the same question as Prime Minister does.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Zhe FanMay 27, 2010 at 3:35 PM

    @Prime Minister and Chris
    Very good question. Right now Building Maker still needs the information stored with the aerial images to determine the accurate location of your model.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AeriliusMay 27, 2010 at 4:54 PM

    If you don't have photos made on your own, you could use (in future) street view imagery. The Sketchup "photo textures" is a web dialog, so maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to port it on the web as a new feature of Building Maker (?)

    ReplyDelete
  6. DRobbinsMay 27, 2010 at 6:21 PM

    That's a sweet idea, Aerilus.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Vladimir PoluyanoffMay 28, 2010 at 7:57 AM

    Очень хорошее добавление. Но в России 3d модели можно размещать только с помощью SketchUp.

    ReplyDelete
  8. LeaLTudoMay 28, 2010 at 9:38 AM

    That´s the first step to allow street view imagery to be used in the Building Maker.And MILO, don't be worried, the future is The Building maker be incorporated to SketchUp.(or vice-versa)

    ReplyDelete
  9. DorkmoMay 28, 2010 at 11:42 AM

    Seems like using this feature + steetview pics (wich have location assocated with them) then building maker could be everywhere.

    my question is, is building maker simply a way to get human translation of photos so that googles computers can use the data to build computer generated models with any geotaged photos?

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownMay 31, 2010 at 1:54 AM

    I've noticed that sometimes there are already (good) grey models of the buildings available. Wouldn't it be interesting to let users create textures for those grey models by the pictures available. This is in my opninion less time consuming than drawing the models by yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  11. UnknownJune 5, 2010 at 2:44 AM

    n the net there are miles of blogs that deal with rendering. Many of these provide wonderful tutorials and tips, very usefull for beginners and for more experienced uses.



    become a model

    ReplyDelete
  12. ixboatJune 6, 2010 at 11:09 AM

    BAN airshoes

    and all spamming weasels like him.
    This is not your personal free advertising venue, you spamming weaselbrain.

    ReplyDelete
  13. DyannLynnJune 7, 2010 at 8:27 AM

    Thanks Steamboat Cruiser. I agree, ban that spammer!

    ReplyDelete
  14. S.DunlopJune 8, 2010 at 10:08 AM

    Bosse - Allowing users to photo-texture the high quality grey models in Paris was discussed at the conference in Zurich. Whether Google take up on this idea remains to be seen.

    ReplyDelete
  15. tOctober 25, 2011 at 3:52 AM

    hello

    ReplyDelete

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