Modeling for Google Earth is now easier

Now that you've downloaded Google SketchUp 7, you may be overwhelmed by all of the new features it has to offer. Let's focus on the new photo matching tools and discover how modeling for Google Earth just got a lot easier.

Let's say we just "matched" a great corner shot of the local bank and are satisfied with the geometry and texturing of the building. Well, almost satisfied -- there are those pesky trees and bushes on every face. Two new tools, Make Unique Texture and Edit Texture will make editing out the trees quick and easy.


First, we'll point SketchUp towards an image editor. In this example, we'll use Photoshop, but any editor will do. Another option is GimPhoto, a free, open source software download.

1. Window > Preferences > Applications
   
2. Choose the image editor of your choice.

Let's dive in and use the new texture tools. To start, isolate the texture on our obstructed faces and make them into their own unique textures. Making a texture unique is helpful if you'd like to sample it to other faces, reduce the file size, or in this instance, take it into an image editor and work on a flat image as opposed to one in perspective. To do so:

1. Select the face.
   
2. Right-click and choose Make Texture Unique.

Finally, we'll bring the now cropped texture into our image editor to remove the trees and bushes. For information on how to remove obstructions, play with color correction, or make alpha-channel images, please visit our Modeling a City Guide PDF. Now, let's get our texture into the editor.

1. Select the face.
   
2. Right-click and hover over Texture.
3. On the pop-out menu, select Edit Texture Image.
   
4. The cropped texture will open in the image editor. Make your edits and save; the edited texture will update in SketchUp.

And voila! A clean, professional looking model.

If you want to submit a model to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth, we recommend removing any obstructions such as trees, people, and cars. While edited textures are not an explicit section of our Acceptance Criteria, it's certainly something we keep in mind when comparing two models of the same building.

Now that you know how to make models with obstruction-free textures, it's no surprise you're aching to start modeling. Check out the Help Model a City collections on the Google 3D Warehouse - with 15 different collections and almost 300 buildings ready to be modeled, there are buildings for modelers of every ability level. Each model file contains imported terrain, a sign post marking the intended building, and a description where you'll find a link to a Picasa Web Album with all of the photos you'll need.

Posted by Alex Juhola, 3D Data Specialist

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Improved Ruby API scripts

The new SketchUp 7 Ruby API brings significant improvements to performance, stability, and functionality. Some enhancements include faster script performance, improved web dialogs, and there are several new methods that allow your scripts to detect your users' activity. Read about these and other improvements on the SketchUp Ruby API Blog.

Posted by Scott Lininger, SketchUp Software Engineer

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Got Style?

As a designer, you use drawings to communicate much more than just the appearance of spaces or objects. Great drawings "set the tone"; they provide a window into the actual experience of your ideas. Drawings also help communicate the state of your design: Where are you in the process? What level of feedback from your clients is appropriate? Is it time to talk about the roof tile, or are you still working out the building massing? Good drawings lead to good conversations, and that leads to better design.

Style Builder lets you take hand-drawn lines (or any other lines you create) and apply them as edges in a SketchUp model. Now you can make your 3D models look like sketches, abstracting out the things you're not ready to discuss, and bringing forward the things you do. Styles you create in Style Builder are also totally unique; no one else will be able to make drawings that look like yours.

Check out this video to see how Style Builder works:



Posted by Bryce Stout, Product Manager

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The Google 3D Warehouse in your language

One of the fun things about the 3D Warehouse is that we get to see how "globally dispersed" 3D modelers are. There are models from Brazil, China, Russia – just to name a few. Often, these models are described in the languages of the people who posted them; unless you're lucky enough to be fluent in 27 (and counting) languages, you might find our new translation feature interesting.

Using Google's new translation service, we've added a new feature that detects if a model's description is written in something other than your preferred language. If so, it offers you a translate option. So even if you don't read Simplified Chinese, you can still read about this model. And if you're having trouble remembering your German, this model is still within reach.

Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager

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All about upgrades

As you may have noticed from our long list of new features in 7, SketchUp Pro is now more powerful than ever. We're trying to make it super easy to upgrade from previous versions of SketchUp Pro to the latest one. If you have an active license for SketchUp Pro 6 (or 5, or 4, or 3, or 2, or 1), you can upgrade it to a SketchUp Pro 7 license through our online store. Once you've purchased your new, upgraded license, you'll receive an email with two important pieces of information:

1. Link to download Google SketchUp Pro 7 (if you haven't already)
2. License information you need to authorize it
   

If you want to try it out before upgrading, please feel free to download an eight-hour trial from our website.

Here are some more things to keep in mind:

• The cost to upgrade each license is US$95, EU€64 or UK£51.
• Please have your current serial number, registered user and company name available when you visit the upgrade portion of our store.
• If you have any trouble upgrading, please visit our online help center for more detailed instructions.
• If you purchased a SketchUp Pro 6 license on or after October 1, 2008, the fee is waived as long as you upgrade before or on December 31, 2008.
• If you purchased a SketchUp Pro license through one of our authorized resellers, please contact that reseller directly for upgrade terms.
• If you've contacted us through the Help Center recently, we will try to respond as quickly as possible. Visit this forum post for troubleshooting suggestions.

Thanks for your continued business and happy sketching!

Posted by Nancy Trigg, SketchUp Sales Manager

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The 3D Warehouse inside SketchUp

To help celebrate the launch of SketchUp 7, the 3D Warehouse team got together and decided to give the SketchUp product team (and the worldwide modeling community) a little gift; we made some changes so the 3D Warehouse works better with SketchUp – and not just SketchUp 7. Tom S. and I sat down to work on it, and a few cups of coffee later, here we are.

Now when you click the Get Models icon in SketchUp, you'll see a new, simplified homepage with a cleaner overview of 3D Warehouse content. You can sit back and watch the models roll by or get straight down to business by searching for what you need. Here's another hint: If you're new to the 3D Warehouse, the content under the Browse and Learn menus is also worth a closer look.

We've improved the model upload process, too. Clicking Share Model (back in SketchUp) provides you with a greatly simplified upload page. It also includes a preview of your model image and a map for geo-located models.


Posted by Matt Simpson, UX (User Experience) Designer

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More about Dynamic Components

If you've never designed in 3D before, you probably assume that 3D objects "just know" what they are – and how they should behave – automatically. Like a staircase that knows to add steps when you make it higher. Or a tree that grows branches as it gets taller. Or a door that opens and closes when you click on it. Up until now, that wasn't possible in Google SketchUp.

But now it is.

In SketchUp 7 (which we just released yesterday), Dynamic Components are 3D models that behave like the real-world objects they represent. They make using SketchUp faster and easier than ever, so you can spend less time modeling and more time designing. They're just "smart" versions of regular SketchUp components, so you can use them in any model you're working on.

Check out this video for a basic rundown on Dynamic Components (a picture's worth a thousand words, after all...)



You can use existing Dynamic Components in both (free and Pro) versions of SketchUp, but if you want to make your own, you'll need SketchUp Pro 7. Dynamic Components work by letting you attach attributes (pieces of extra information) to SketchUp groups and components. After that, you can add formulas to create relationships and control how they interact. It's a lot like working with spreadsheets, actually.

And if you're not sure, just download SketchUp Pro 7 to play around with them. You'll find plenty of resources to help you get started: videos, FAQ, self-paced tutorials, working examples and of course, written documentation.

Posted by Peter Saal, Product Manager

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Sometimes you need more than a model

LayOut 2 is:
1) included with SketchUp Pro 7
2) out of Beta
3) available today!

What's LayOut? Well, it's like this...

Say you've got kids (like I do) and they've snookered you into working on a design for the new playground at their elementary school. "No problem!" you say, and you whip up a a great design and model it like a pro in SketchUp. Project done, right? Well... now the Principal would like to see the design, as would the president of the PTO. And then the fund raising committee would like a nice picture to display at the bake sale. The well-meaning contractor needs to know what it looks like, and wants to get the landscaping started today. They all think your model is great, and they all want a copy of it. Right now.

What you need is LayOut: the easy-to-use documentation tool for SketchUp models. With LayOut, you drop your SketchUp model into a pre-built document template (with professional titleblock and everything), generate a quick set of scaled drawings for the contractor, and a nice presentation perspective for the bake sale. And when you're done, you email a PDF file to everyone on the project and give the Principal a polished slide presentation in his office from your laptop.



Funds are raised, the playground is built, the kids are heroes with their friends and everybody's happy! In fact, everything is going great now, except the kids (inspired by your success with the playground) would now like you to get them a puppy. You're on your own with that one...

Posted by John Bacus, Product Manager

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Drum roll please: Introducing SketchUp 7

Two years in the making and the result of many, many people's hard work, Google SketchUp 7 has arrived. You are cordially invited to visit our website to download a copy for yourself. We can't wait to see what you think.

First things first: We made a video to tell you about the new stuff in 7. I recommend watching it twice: Once to learn about what's new, and once more to see what programmers do when they're told to "just stand there" in front of a video camera. Feel free to microwave yourself some popcorn before you click "play".



You can find an exhaustive list of what's new in 7 on our (aptly named) What's New in SketchUp 7 page, so I won't bother repeating everything here. Suffice it to say, there's a lot, and we couldn't be prouder.

For SketchUp 7, we decided to focus on three main areas:

1. Making SketchUp easier for new modelers to learn
2. Adding "power tools" for SketchUp Pro gurus who dream in faces and edges
3. Clearing the way for even more model sharing and collaboration

To that end, we've done everything from making small changes that make everyone's life easier (like making it so that edges automatically split other edges where they cross), to launching LayOut 2 (a whole separate program that lets Pro users create detailed multi-page documents and presentations).

Enough blathering from me – the best way to learn about 7 is to download and try it out for yourself. But before you go, three things:

• Installing SketchUp 7 on your computer won't affect SketchUp 6; you'll have access to both versions for as long as you like.
• If you have a license for SketchUp Pro 6 and you'd like to upgrade to Pro 7, have a look at our store to find out how.
• Keep an eye on this blog for plenty of in-depth follow-up posts about the features and improvements in SketchUp 7. We'll be adding new stuff every day this week.

Have fun!

Posted by Aidan Chopra (on behalf of the SketchUp, LayOut and 3D Warehouse teams)

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When in Rome...Teach!

This week, we introduced the new Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth, a groundbreaking collection of 6,700 3D buildings modeled as leading scholars determined they stood in the year 320 A.D.

While we hope that teachers are already pretty excited to incorporate Ancient Rome 3D into their lessons, we wanted to go a step further and issue an open challenge to educators to harness the power of this new tool in the classroom. Today, we're proud to announce the launch of the inaugural Google lesson plan contest for K-12 educators in the US, the Ancient Rome in 3D Curriculum Competition. Whether you teach art history to high school students or geometry to fifth graders, the new visual tool can spice up lessons old and new. From a comparative architectural study using the ancient 3D models and modern Street View imagery to a new LitTrip of Virgil's Aeneid, the only limit is your imagination!


From Caesar to Augustus, the Roman Forum to the Arch of Constantine, it's time to get those creative juices flowing. Register and upload your original curriculum at earth.google.com/romecontest by February 9th for the chance at fame, glory, and an awesome prize package!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Earth Education

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