A food processor threatens Boulder
Blender (KMZ) to the rescue. (What?)
I have no CAD skills. I can’t draw. Fortunately SketchUp has all sorts of predefined components you can download and mutilate. Scale them up, export them to Google Earth (like so), and you have your instant dadaist horror montage. This is ridiculously easy. Bad, but easy.
(BTW, SketchUp supports materials. I wonder if this means we can expect support for surface mapping in Google Earth soon.)
Google buys @Last, makers of SketchUp, a 3D authoring tool that’s had glowing reviews for its ease of use and which has been featured on this blog before. (Sept 9: “Sketchup and Google snuggle up” (which is where the affair must have started); Sept 12: List of authoring tools; Oct 12: Plugin for Google Earth PC released; Jan 12: Plugin for Google EarthMac released).
All the available news is up on SketchUp’s website, [and you can read Jeff Martin, SketchUp’s Product Marketing Manager, blog the news on Google’s official blog.] What follows is punditry:-)
Burning questions for which there aren’t answers yet: Will SketchUp be integrated into Google Earth or continue to exist as a separate application? What will the pricing be like? (Currently it’s ‚Ǩ469/$495 (what is it in US dollars, BTW? I can’t tell from Sweden.)) Will Google make a subset of the tools free, much like what it did when it bought Keyhole’s Earth and relaunched a pay product as a free version with upgrades to Plus and Pro?
SketchUp has a Mac version too, which makes it a bit of a rarity in the CAD world. This of course mean that Google can continue to offer feature parity for whatever Google Earth/Sketchup solution it comes out with.
It’s occured to me that Google bought something more than a virtual construction set. Sketchup also supports a deft set of file formats. From the readme:
SketchUp supports import of vector files such as AutoCAD 2006, 2005, 2004, 2002, and earlier DWG and DXF files as well as 3DS and DEM files. SketchUp also imports image files such as BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and TGA. SketchUp exports DWG and DXF from release 12 to 2006 as well as 3D Studio .3DS, VRML, and OBJ. Raster file exports include the Piranesi Epix formats in addition to the above image file formats. For 2D vector applications, SketchUp exports .EPS and PDF. For animators, SketchUp for Windows exports AVI while SketchUp for Mac OS X exports QuickTime.
BTW, you can download a free trial of SketchUp that gives you 8 hours of evaluation usage and a comprehensive 3D tutorial. You might as well get started, as you _will_ be using this software before long to populate Google’s Earth.
[Update 17:48 UTC: Google now also gains a ESRI Shapefile importer and the ability to export Sketchup Files as 3D objects and symbology for some ArcGIS products using these plugins.]
Geobloggers, one of the most useful and impressive social applications to come out of the initial frenzy of experimentation with mapping APIs that followed the release of Google Maps and then Earth, is no more. It all came down to time constraints, writes Dan Catt.
This leaves a big gap for those of us who quickly got used to having geotagged Flickr photos available in our field of view on Google Earth via Geobloggers’ dynamic network link. In the meantime, though, others have started to meet the demand that Dan showed was there. (Thanks Dan, BTW).
For example, you get the same functionality with the free and easy-to-use Panoramio (though it’s not for Flickr photos). Commercial photo sharing services Smugmug and Pixagogo are also both experimenting with KML feeds.
Flickr photos, in the meantime, can be searched with Flyr, a very capable search tool for geotagged Flickr photos. It returns a KML file pointing to photos that meet your search criteria. But it’s not an official Flickr service, it’s a clever hack.
Flickr doesn’t currently have a KML network link like what Geobloggers provided for Flickr photos and what Panoramio now does for its own pictures. Given that so many Flickr photos are geotagged, surely this cannot last? Or might an official solution be lacking because Flickr = Yahoo! and Google Earth ‚↠Yahoo!?
For some time now, you’ve been able to use GPS Visualizer’s online forms to create custom-made topo maps and other overlays for Google Earth. Now Adam Schneider’s upped the ante again, creating a network link that lets you configure those overlays from within Google Earth. It’s a truly nifty piece of work — encompassing a wealth of mapping sources (see list) — and deserves to be a permanent fixture on any self-respecting Places panel.
Here’s how it works. When you find a view you’d like to enhance with an overlay, you refresh GPS Visualizer’s network link. This sends your position to Adam’s server, which in turn goes and finds out which maps are available for your location, chooses the best resolution depending on your height, and returns a list of links. Each link is in fact a pre-configured query for GPS Visualizer’s API. Click one, and you are taken to a web page where your personal overlay is ready for the taking.
Besides this being a fantastic resource, I particulary enjoy the implementation. I enjoy being able to move around an area while I download different overlays of the same place. Decloupling the view from the refresh makes the process of gathering overlays a lot more responsive. Automatic view-based refresh can make a network link feel too much like an overeager butler:-)
Oh, and the maps are huge. It made my aging G4 Mac PowerBook weep (the G5 had no problems). Adam recommends using the form for older systems, where you can ask for smaller overlays.
4. Can I see the Mars data using the Google Earth client?
Not yet, but we’re working on it. To whet your appetite, you can check out this 3-D fly-through movie of Valles Marineris made using this data.
The old pay version of Keyhole’s Earth had a Mars layer that was very popular, judging from legacy comments, and now it’s coming back. Flying over Mars is a boyhood dream of mine. Mars + network links, Mars + 3D structures, Mars + detailed imagery from Reconnaisance… I can’t wait.
OMFG. Google Mars!
