Google Building Maker Availability Expands with Two Chilean Cities

Google wants as much 3D content for Google Earth and Maps as possible but the number of talented 3D modelers willing to devote their time for this is limited. Last fall the Google Building Maker tool was introduced to simplify the process and to give everyone a chance at recreating the buildings in their town for Google Earth. Now, a couple more cities have been added to the list of supported locations, the Chilean cities of Santiago and Valparaiso.

“For those of you who haven’t yet tried it, Google Building Maker is our simple 3D modeling tool that allows you to construct buildings by aligning various types of blocks to photos - all from your Internet browser. The completed models are automatically geo-located and then reviewed for inclusion in the 3D Buildings layer on Google Earth,” Nicole Drobeck, Geo Community Advocate at Google wrote.

“When the tool was originally released last fall, users could create buildings in 50 cities. Since then, more cities have continually been added, and the growing tally is now at 94. As part of our latest offering, we’re excited to announce that the cities of Santiago and Valparaiso in Chile are the first South American cities available in Google Building Maker,” she announced

In the months since launch, the number of cities supported has almost doubled. The reason why Google doesn’t just enable the feature for every city out there is because the tool needs aerial photos for the location in order to help modelers create the 3D representation.

Still, a number of buildings in the two cities have already been created using the Google Sketch Up modeling software. Google notes that one contributor has submitted 50 models for Valparaiso which are now included in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer. A couple of modelers have contributed 30 buildings each for Santiago.

Google SketchUp is available for download here.

Google Earth for Windows is available for download here. Google Earth for Linux is available for download here. Google Earth for Mac is available for download here.