14 DAY TRIAL // Google Maps has evolved almost beyond recognition since it was first launched but the search giant is far from satisfied. Having a 2D world to explore and play with is nice but a fully tridimensional one is so much better. Not content with just having some amusement park or famous buildings in 3D in Google Earth, the company is now calling out to all wannabe architects to start creating their own buildings with Google Building Maker in the hopes that entire cities will eventually be modeled.
“One of the best ways to get a big project done — and done well — is to open it up to the world. As such, today we're announcing the launch of Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) tool for creating buildings for Google Earth,” Mark Limber, product manager, and Matt Simpson, user experience designer, wrote. “We like to think of Building Maker as a cross between Google Maps and a gigantic bin of building blocks. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide.”
There is really no skill needed in creating a building with Building Maker and almost no learning curve; all it takes is matching the shapes to the building. It can take as little as a few minutes but the results can be spectacular. After you're done modeling the building Google will review it and, if there isn't a better model for the same building, it will be added to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.
Building Maker runs inside the browser but it needs the Google Earth plugin to be installed. Users can also use the 3D modeling tool Google SketchUp to touch up the building or make some more advanced modifications. Google Building Maker is now available for only 50 cities around the world but the company is confident more will be added later. This is likely due to the lack of good aerial photos necessary to create the 3D models and right now even some of the biggest cities in the world are missing.