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Getting Started

Building Maker Getting Started Guide

Saving and applying photos to a building

Buildings created with Building Maker are stored in the 3D Warehouse: An online repository of 3D models. Photo textures are automatically applied to the building surfaces as part of the save process. Additionally, your building will be submitted for inclusion in the Google Earth 3D Buildings Layer to be viewed by all Google Earth users. To save and photo texture your building:

  1. Click the Save button. The Save to the 3D Warehouse dialog box appears.
  2. Note: The message "Some building faces cannot be correctly photo-textured. Constrain your blocks from images [image numbers] to fix" will appear if you have not constrained blocks in all of the images necessary to properly photo-texture your building. Click the Cancel button to exit the 3D Warehouse dialog box. Click on the image numbers to constrain the block to each image.

  3. Replace the current building title, such as "Model in Albuquerque, NM, USA" with a more descriptive name of the building.
  4. Replace the current building description, such as "Modeled with Google Building Maker" with a more detailed description.
  5. (Optional) Add the address of the building.
  6. Click the Save button. The building is saved to the 3D Warehouse and the process of photo texturing (applying the photo images of the exterior of the building) automatically begins. The message "Your building has been saved to 3D Warehouse. Simply keep working or create a new building" appears at the top of the Editor when saving is complete.

Note: The aerial images used to texture the building exterior are the same images you use to create your model.

Note: The photo texturing process might yield areas of black texturing on the exterior of a building. This occurs because a nearby building was obstructing your newly textured building when the aerial photos were taken. You can generally fix this problem by creating the buildings that surround the your building. Each time you create a nearby building, the photo texturing process launches and reapplies textures to all buildings in the cluster, usually resulting in clearer photo textures.

Tip: Creating several adjacent buildings will yield the best photo textures.

updated 10/16/2012