14 DAY TRIAL // Google is announcing a new Model Your Town Competition, the 2012 edition. The goal, as before, is to encourage communities to create 3D replicas of their towns and regions for Google Earth and Maps.
Since this is a competition after all, the winning town, besides the fact that it will be represented in 3D in Google Earth and Maps, will get a $25,000, €18,400 grant for a local school.
"Following the success of last year’s Google Model Your Town competition, today we're launching the second Google Model Your Town Competition," Allyson McDuffie from the Google Geo team wrote.
"Model Your Town is about geo-modeling – making photo-textured models of real-life buildings that appear in Google Earth," she said.
"The Model Your Town Competition is also a chance to celebrate your town by adding it to the 3D map. Of course, the USD$25,000 for a local school/district is a nice incentive too," she added.
The Google Model Your Town Competition is simple, communities and local modelers get together to recreate their towns and submit the models to the Google 3D warehouse. After that, all that's left to do is complete an entry form.
The competition runs until the end of February 2012, so teams have about four months to submit the 3D models.
It's not a competition of numbers, the amount of models submitted counts, but not too much, the quality of the models and the way they represent the town and the are is more important.
You can use Google's SketchUp or even the Building Maker to create the 3D models. The 2010 winner was the town of Barranco, Lima, Peru which was modeled largely by Jorge De Albertis from Lima, Peru. You can check out a video with the winner below.
