Google Launches Building Maker: Makes Adding 3D Buildings to Google Earth Easy
For some locations, Google already shows 3D buildings in Google Earth though it wasn't very easy for users to add their own buildings to these maps. Today, however, Google released Building Maker, which takes an almost game-like approach to crowdsourcing the production of these 3D buildings. Users simply pick a building in any of the 50 cities worldwide where this project is currently active, pick a building you would like to model, and Google will present you with aerial images of this building. All the user has to do is align a 3D wireframe model of the building with these images and a textured 3D model of the building is automatically saved in the Google Sketchup 3D warehouse. Once approved, the model will be added to Google Earth's building layer.
Just yesterday, we wrote about how Google is starting to crowdsource more of its map making process and this is clearly yet another step in this direction. Google Sketchup made making new buildings for Google Earth pretty easy, but the new Building Maker, which is completely browser-based an makes use of the Google Earth browser plugin, takes this to a completely new level. To test the product out, we just picked a random building and the new model was ready in less than 5 minutes.
Once you have created your model, it has to go through an approval process and, if accepted, will be added to Google Earth. Sadly, there is no way to see if another model of the same building already exists except for loading up Google Earth, but even then, you can't be sure that somebody else's model isn't already waiting for approval.
Overall, this looks like a very smart way for Google to enhance the 3D experience in Google Earth and it will be interesting to see if Google will also build more services on top of these 3D-rendered cities at a later point.
It also shows that Google has access to a vast repository of aerial photography of all of these locations. Microsoft's Bing Maps highlights this feature in its bird's eye mode, but Google doesn't surface any of these images yet.
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Google is being awfully hypocritical here. According to Google’s Terms of Service for the 3D Warehouse:
http://sketchup...n/3dwh/tos.html
Clause 11.4 states: you may not … use or distribute Content obtained from Google Services in a mapping or geographic application or service.
So much for keeping data open. They’re asking people to GIVE them data, so that they can keep it under lock.
There is another way to view if a model exists whether or not it has been aproved. Go to the building maker pick the location you wish to build and above the pictures that it gives you to build from click on the Viewer and it will show you the model you have along with any other in the area so if you view it before you have built anything if there is no building then feel free to start one and if there is feel free to improve it!!!!!!!!