14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is looking to attract 3D designers to Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth. Following the acquisition of Caligari, Microsoft made available for free trueSpace 7.6, a comprehensive toolset connecting the solutions directly with its mapping, imagery and search platform. In a move intended to boost the three dimensional content available via Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth, Microsoft has introduced the Virtual Earth Gallery Contest. Designed as an area of the Caligari (trueSpace) 3D Authoring and Collaboration website, Virtual Earth Gallery is set up to centralize 3D work in exchange for the possibility of winning a prize.
“We've setup a monthly trueSpace / Virtual Earth integration contest to up the ante, as it were. We hope to see some really cool 3D models uploaded into Live Search Maps as a part of this effort. The movie above was submitted by Stephen May, our first winner (August, 2008) whose "Wizitch Tower" model is a beautiful addition to Live Search Maps' Collections and placed quite nicely in Christchurch, New Zealand,” revealed Chris Pendleton, Virtual Earth Tech Evangelist, Microsoft Live Search.
Microsoft has managed no to offer any detail on the incentives it is offering to 3D designers that go ahead and submit their work to Virtual Earth via trueSpace. According to Pendleton, users will have to be registered trueSpace7.6 owners in order to participate in the content. At the same time, the 3D models created will first have to be integrated with Virtual Earth before they are taken into consideration by the judges.
Pendleton even enumerated the additional criteria for participants to qualify for the contest: “To enter, use sign in to our Gallery submission pages. To view the prizes for the current month, visit our Gallery Information page. Judging Criteria: The criteria for choosing the winner is left open to the judges, but some guidelines are: an object with a relevant geo-location; good modeling that shows enough detail but without excessive polygon counts; good texturing. The same object may be submitted to the Caligari monthly Image or Animation galleries as well as to the Virtual Earth Gallery - entering or placing in one category will not affect the chances of placing in the others”.
trueSpace 7.6 is available for download here.