Google Earth+Sketchup=Addicting!
Posted on 2010-08-13 21:56 by Martin
After installing Google Earth to see what the fuss is all about, I entered earth atmosphere on a trajectory towards my hometown. I was shocked to see only two buildings had been made into 3d models!
While inspecting said models. I arrived on Google's 3Dwarehouse website. I then quickly picked up Sketchup and watched a few intro video's. Playing around with the program I was hooked almost instantly, however I didn't have a target building to model. The next day I jumped into the car, armed with my DSLR to set out and photograph the church in Kropswolde.
While taking pictures, I noticed the lack of sharp shadows on the building due to the overcast. So here's a tip for taking pictures of buildings to use as textures to use as textures on your models.
"PRO"-tip :D
Make sure you take your pictures on a cloudy day. The overcast will make sure you won't get the sharp shadows caused buy the sun.
I want to take our municipality Hoogezand-Sappemeer into the 21th century, mainly because of the lack of models. Choosing between all the subjects is a problem though. With so many cool looking buildings to choose from, I find myself lost as to where to start. I guess the big prominent buildings are first, but even those are plentiful!
Ah well... Since I can model pretty fast, I guess we shall see where this addiction will take our town. Taking usable "texture" pictures is the hard part though, what with all the trees and other stuff blocking a clear line of sight. Good thing my image editing skills are up2date :P
At this moment I have seven models in Google's 3Dwarehouse, five of which have been accepted to the '3D Buildings' layer.
![]()
I've also set up a Hoogezand-Sappemeer collection on Google's 3Dwarehouse, which will contain all models for the municipality. Of course including models not made by me...
While inspecting said models. I arrived on Google's 3Dwarehouse website. I then quickly picked up Sketchup and watched a few intro video's. Playing around with the program I was hooked almost instantly, however I didn't have a target building to model. The next day I jumped into the car, armed with my DSLR to set out and photograph the church in Kropswolde.
While taking pictures, I noticed the lack of sharp shadows on the building due to the overcast. So here's a tip for taking pictures of buildings to use as textures to use as textures on your models.
"PRO"-tip :D
Make sure you take your pictures on a cloudy day. The overcast will make sure you won't get the sharp shadows caused buy the sun.
I want to take our municipality Hoogezand-Sappemeer into the 21th century, mainly because of the lack of models. Choosing between all the subjects is a problem though. With so many cool looking buildings to choose from, I find myself lost as to where to start. I guess the big prominent buildings are first, but even those are plentiful!
Ah well... Since I can model pretty fast, I guess we shall see where this addiction will take our town. Taking usable "texture" pictures is the hard part though, what with all the trees and other stuff blocking a clear line of sight. Good thing my image editing skills are up2date :P
At this moment I have seven models in Google's 3Dwarehouse, five of which have been accepted to the '3D Buildings' layer.
I've also set up a Hoogezand-Sappemeer collection on Google's 3Dwarehouse, which will contain all models for the municipality. Of course including models not made by me...