Using photographs of the actual structure to "paint" your model is a requirement for models to be accepted to the Photorealistic 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.
Your model will not be accepted for one of the following reasons:
- Your model does not contain photo textures. The minimum requirement for acceptance is that all upward facing surfaces of the model and at least the main facade are textured using photographs. For surfaces that can’t be photographed, such as the roof, use the color satellite imagery in Google Earth or other supplied photographs available from Street View and aerial imagery in Building Maker.
- Your model contains unrealistic or tiled textures. If you use bright or highly contrasting textures that do not reflect the real world, your model will not be accepted.
- Your texture images are too large. Texture images that are larger than 1024 x 1024 pixels in size may not process correctly for Google Earth.
If your model does not adhere to the above acceptance criteria, you will be notified of the following problem: 
Incomplete Photo Texturing.
Refer to the following to ensure your model is accepted:
- Building Maker
- If you see a note when saving your model that says "Some building faces cannot be correctly photo-textured. Constrain your blocks from images..." it means your model will have untextured surfaces. You must align your building in the listed images for all sides of your model to be textured. It is recommended to align your building in 6 or more images.
- Please see Editing a Building Maker model to make changes and fix problems with your model.
- You can also edit your building using SketchUp to fix problems with your model or add textures.
- SketchUp
- Take photos of the structure you are modeling and apply them to your model as textures. Tiled textures are not considered photo textures. A model’s surface should be textured with a single photo instead of using repeated or "tiled" materials. It is acceptable and encouraged to edit your textures in a photo editing software to remove objects such as trees or other occluding objects while maintaining realistic representation of the photographed structure. Please reference the images above for examples of tiled textures and photo textures.
- It is recommended to use high-quality and properly sized photographs to produce textures. We suggest using images greater than 256 pixels wide, but less than 512 pixels. It’s possible to use images up to 1024 x 1024 pixels in size, however, model files larger than 10MB won’t be accepted into the 3D Warehouse. Please see Optimizing photos for geo-modeling for help with sizing your textures images.
- SketchUp has a feature to apply Street View imagery directly to your model if it is in an area that has Street View.
- Look for images online to use as textures in your model. Please make sure you only use images you have the rights to.
- Use the Google Earth imagery that is imported in SketchUp to texture the upward facing surfaces of your model. If the Google Earth imagery is not clear for the area you are modeling try looking at historical imagery in Google Earth for better imagery. You can export the imagery from Google Earth to be used in SketchUp.
- If you are unable to obtain photographs for all sides of your model, it is acceptable to use SketchUp materials, solid colors, or similar tiled textures provided they match the color and brightness of the photo textures that do exist in your model. If you use tiled textures, it is recommended to make unique textures from photo textures in your model to ensure the color and brightness will be uniform throughout your model.
- For help editing and fixing problems with a SketchUp model that is already uploaded to the 3D Warehouse, see Editing a SketchUp model in the 3D Warehouse.