3D Model Your City

I like maps. I always have. I like to understand how places connect
together.  Browsing satelite imagery to "see" a place I've never been
is interesting and much cheaper and more convenient than travelling
there. It can be a kind of voyeuristic vacation imagining where you
hang over streets and buldings looking down at people frozen in time,
powerless to move or react, unaware of your lowres overhead gaze.

When Google Streetview was intoduced, I "walked aroung New york,
apinning to take in the towering buildings, watching the couriers in
the stop motion sequence of several shots load parcels and enter their
trucks.

Google Earth allowed for "drifting over a landscape" and when terrain
was enabled it even simulated the kinds of views you might have from a
place. I was mostly uninterested in the grey block buildings that
started to appear in cities like San Francisco and LA.  They covered
up the landscape with grey, hiding roads and cars and people.

Google building maker has changed my view on these 3D buildings. By
leveraging the power of optical illusions, building maker let's
ordinary people make 3D buildings wrapped in satelite imagery.  To
make a building you view it from many angles using different satelite
images.  You wrap wireframe boxes and other shapes aroung the
building, matching the roof, the corners, the footprint until you are
satisfied with your building. You can preview it in 3D and then save
it to the google 3D warehouse. If google likes it they will include it
in Google Earth.

I had "made" some buildings, forgotten about them and returned months
later to find that my buildings had been included in Google Earth. Now
I have 19 / 33 models accepted and I have taken on mapping 2 blocks of
East Hastings street in Vancouver BC.  With the Olympics coming to
Vancouver in Feb 2010 I wanted to give people the opportunity to
explore parts of a significant Vancouver neighbourhood that wasn't
well represented compared to 3D model representation in wealthier parts of Vancouver.  I figured the folks on East Hastings might not have a chance to do some 3D modeling.


But of course you have the chance to really bring your city alive.

Cheers, 
Greg.