3D Building Maker Added to Google Earth

ew to the Google 3D family. The Mountain View giant has just put online a service modeling 3D buildings, inspired by the free Google SketchUp. Google Building Maker shall, once is not customary to use the power of community to accelerate the development of Google Earth's 3D mapping software.

Based on the Google Maps interface (aerial mapping), Google Building Maker allows first to select where do modeling. Currently fifty cities are available, but Google hopes "to add others as soon as possible." The blue areas indicate buildings already modeled. To align the volumes (boxes, prisms, pyramids and other) on the photos, the tool offers various aerial views of the building. The textures are then applied automatically. After a quick preview, it only remains to record the creation in the store 3D image of Google (Google 3D Warehouse), the upgrade in SketchUp, if necessary, and wait about a week to see appear in Google Earth .

Besides the appearance and free online service, Google Building Maker is part of the strategy UGC (content generated by users) from Google. One way for the company to accelerate development of tools (in this case, mapping the world) through an army of "volunteers".