14 DAY TRIAL // Google is once again expanding the number of cities supported in Building Maker, its online tool for 3D building models. It's adding five cities in Argentina and one more in Canada, enabling passionate volunteers from those places, or from anywhere in the world, to start recreating the cities in three dimensions for Google Earth and Maps.
And to make sure that it generates interest in the new cities, Google is also holding a competition addressed to those that will create models for these new locations for the chance to win a GPS-enabled camera and other goodies.
"It’s a great day for the citizens of Argentina -- and for Canadians in the nation’s capital. We’ve released new Building Maker imagery in six new cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina, Córdoba, Argentina, Mar Del Plata, Argentina, Mendoza, Argentina, Rosario, Argentina and Ottawa, Canada," Nicole Drobeck, Geo Community Program Manager at Google, announced.
Building Maker is a web-based tool which makes it very easy for users to create 3D buildings intended for use in Google Earth and Maps.
It provides aerial imagery for reference and, for the simpler models, all a user has to do is make sure that the model aligns itself properly with the edges of the building. The tool even textures the model using Google's own imagery.
Of course, if you have better quality images, you can use those and if you're a bit more experienced you can import the model in Google SketchUp and clean it up or add details.
Google is also holding a competition for these new cities. Running until August 8th, the competition will seek to determine the best models submitted in this time and also the modeler with the most entries admitted to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.
"You can create models in these six cities to win prizes in two different categories: Best Model and Most Models. The first place prize is a GPS-enabled digital camera; second place is a Building Maker shirt; and third is a Google travel mug," Google explained.