'Model Your Town' and Win a Visit from a Google Team

Google Maps is great for practical information, and satellite imagery can be very useful and fun in many cases. Adding a third dimension though can make things a lot more exciting, so Google is pushing to get more 3D models for Google Earth with a new competition dubbed “Model Your Town.” The name says it all, Google wants people to recreate their towns or villages in 3D for a chance to win some money for the local school system and international recognition for the town and modelers.

“We're pleased to announce the first-ever, international Google Model Your Town Competition. You're invited to use our free tools — SketchUp and Building Maker — to make sure your community is represented on the world's biggest 3D stage,” Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp for Education program manager and Aidan Chopra SketchUp evangelist wrote.

“Every town that participates has the chance to be included in Google Earth's 3D Buildings layer where millions of people can see it. The winning town (as decided by a popular vote) will win money for its schools, a Google-sponsored party for its modelers and plenty more,” they added.

Google Earth already has an impressive amount of 3D buildings, but they're mostly for well-known places and large cities. Adding models for most of the world's towns, which is what Google is aiming for, is a daunting task even for the giant company and it has to get the users involved if it wants to complete it.

Google provides all the tools necessary with SketchUp, the free 3D modeling software if offers, but also the recently launched Building Maker. These tools make it easy for anyone, even with no modeling experience, to start recreating the buildings in their towns. The competition has the potential to drum up a lot of interest and involvement from the communities for example it would make a very interesting school project. Google has set up a site to lay out all of the details of the competition and the prizes and also made a couple of videos to get you started.

Google SketchUp is also available for download here. Google Earth is available for download here.