14 DAY TRIAL // Google's '3D modeling department' has been working overtime lately with a big number of updates, features and even competitions being revealed in a short period of time. The Building Maker web tool is now available in eight more cities and 25 new languages, Google says, and, as a reminder, the Model Your Town competition is getting very close to an end with the final entries having to come before March 2nd.
"Today, we released two new international and six US cities for Google Building Maker. We now have high-resolution, multi-angle aerial imagery available for over 75 cities -- quickly modeling buildings for context or Google Earth just keeps getting easier," Jelena Oertel, Google Building Maker Team, wrote. "We’ve added support for more languages, so now your favorite online geo-modeling tool is available in a total of 39 languages," she added.
Google launched Building Maker last year to make it easier for regular folks to make their own 3D models for Google Earth without needing any special training or knowledge. The tool is as easy as it gets to use and Google provides all the needed material, like high-quality aerial imagery.
Aerial imagery is still in the early stages in Google Maps and the company is in the process of acquiring these types of photos for various cities around the world. The feature is now available as a Google Maps Labs experiment and has been available for Maps API users users for a while now.
In the meantime, Google has been running the Model Your Town competition, aimed mostly at schools and students, urging budding 3D modelers to recreate their town in Google Earth. The winning team will get a donation from Google to the local public school system and also a visit from a bunch of Googlers.
"Big, Flashing Reminder: There's one week left to get your entries in for the 2010 Google Model Your Town Competition. We've got some really beautiful towns so far, but it's likely that most folks are waiting until the very last minute to fill out the official entry form. The very last minute, in this case, is 11:59 PM PST on March 1, 2010," Aidan Chopra, SketchUp evangelist, announced.