Building Maker vs Sketchup (i.e., pet peeves)
jago716
new advent of Building Maker, released a few months ago...
Sure, it's a wonderful user-friendly program, an easy way to pick any
[rectilinear] city building, choose enough aerial angles to determine
proper placement and proportions, and plop it into your 3D warehouse
account. Prior to Building Maker, there was mostly Sketchup, which
had to be downloaded on your desktop, but which also allowed for more
accuracy and improved skill in significant details. Since October
2009, however, at least 20,000 buildings have popped up all over the
planet (in a select number of cities) thanks to Building Maker. Some
are a bit more complex than others, but most of them, if they were
similarily designed in Sketchup, would pass for "simple" designs, as
opposed to moderate or complex.
But I have a couple of issues with how Building Maker is being used.
- More often than not, people don't bother with picking a distinct
label for their model. They simply go with the cheap default name
"Building in [WhateverTown], [WhateverState, USA]." One could do this
with any building in any random BM zone, even somewhere the modeller
has never visited in his life. And it's been happening with public
buildings that have official names (e.g. schools, churches, apartment
stores) which some people don't even bother to check out.
- It so recently happened that one of my earliest Sketchup models
accepted (almost a year ago) in GE's 3d layer - a prominent group of 3
adjacent, simple, rectilinear buildings, in Cambridge, MA known
*collectively* as Fresh Pond Apartments - was bumped off by several
separate BM models designed by separate people (each using the
standard generic label). The reason given? "Model needs to be divided
into separate models."
Pretty lame answer. Could it be that certain buildings "deserve" to
originate in Building Maker, regardless of how much (or little) effort
people had already put into them thru Sketchup AND got blue-ribboned?
Can't we give credit where credit is due, and leave well enough
alone? If anyone out there has had this happen to them, by all means,
speak out.
-jago716
3dBloke
Building Maker. Basically, to speed up the creation of 3D structures
for Google Earth. But the vastly different level of care and
attention to detail that goes into a SketchUp model requires a whole
different approach by the modeller.
Building Maker encourages a lazy approach, frequently resulting in a
low quality model. I considered using Building Maker when it was
first released onto the world... in fact I tried it on a few buildings
and uploaded one of them but was so dissatisfied with the result that
I deleted it from the warehouse.
For me, Building maker has had a major part to play in my stopping
work on GE 3D models (at least for now). When I started out I recall
one of the Google tutorials saying "Make it [the model building]
beautiful". At the time I found this quite inspiring but how can this
goal be maintained when Building Maker is flooding the 3D layer?
matthiasbasler
It is interesting to note that since the introduction of BuildingMaker
the quality of user modelled buildings has dramatically changed:
It has levelled on a rather low quality level.
- You don't see any untextured (or generically textured) buildings any
more (which is good)
- You don't see many very good BM models either (which is bad)
You might (legitimately) whine over people who just leave the title
"Building in X, Y" for their BM model, but ironically this is already
an improvement over titles like "My house", "My home" and the like,
which were used by many people before.
I experienced another problem with BuildingMaker models:
I have the impression that the acceptance criteria for BM models are
lower than the one for Sketchup models. Of course, the "Building does
not exist" is no issue, but often enough the reviewers seem not to
check if the shape of the model building has ANYTHING to do with the
shape of the real building.
I have found examples in North Vancouver where some architectonically
rather complex buildings have been modelled as one single cuboid block
- AND GOT ACCEPTED! Personally I don't find such buildings an
improvement of the Google Earth 3D landscape.
The quality criteria for SU models are legitimately high - for BM
there must be minimum standards, too!
P.S: jago716
With your "Model needs to be divided into separate models." answer
above.
I can only advice to split up your model and upload separately. If
Google has the choice between one larger or several smaller models
they will usually prefer the separate models, even if their quality is
somewhat lower.
N. W. Perry
and ease of Building Maker, and how it speeds the creation of 3D
landscapes in GE. For my part, I had never used SketchUp before BM was
introduced, but I toyed with BM a little and found I could get a lot
out of it.
I agree about the generic naming; I always put in the real name of the
building if it has one, and if not, something more specific than just
"building" such as "church", "parking garage", etc. I also include its
address, some description of what's inside the building, and
architectural details if they're of interest and I can find them.
Alas, none of the available cities in BM are ones I'm highly familiar
with, but I look forward to the chance to model my hometown if it
appears on the list.
I also am a little dismayed by the proliferation of simple boxes all
over the land, especially when most of the real buildings have at
least a couple of architectural details that could be included. I was
particularly annoyed when one of my models got bumped in favor of a
simple box that would have taken 2 minutes to make, while my model
(it's since been reinstated) was more like a half-hour effort and more
accurately reflected the building's true shape. I try to go more for
quality than quantity in my models, although I have a small collection
already accepted into the layer. That said, I would welcome the day
when one of my BM models is replaced by a carefully built, well-
textured SketchUp version. Unfortunately, I think people are
discouraged from building where models already exist, however shoddy
they may be.
Here's a link to my latest Building Maker effort, which took me about
3 days and which I think really stretches the limits of the program
(I'm actually impressed it was capable of this complicated geometry).
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=2ff0e4f6367457603ef2ef433d070898
Although I was able to get the shape, I'm afraid I've pushed beyond
the texturing capabilities of Building Maker in this case. But judging
by some of the already-accepted, partially-textured cuboid models,
perhaps I shouldn't worry!
portly
remarkable work...very impressive.
I am modelling exclusively in my hometown, Philadelphia...and here we
have row upon row upon row of attached single-family (you guessed it!)
ROW houses. I have found that a combination of techniques works pretty
well here. Well, at least judging by the rate at which Google has been
accepting my models, they seem happy enough with it...these are pretty
"pedestrian" structures, all in all, but an integral part of the
Philadelphia experience.
Many of the rear elevations of these rows of homes, many times
stretching for entire blocks at a time, are not visible to direct
Street View imagery. IN cases like this, where i know i will not be
able to grab direct Street View imagery, I make a BM model of the row
of homes, then start in on a SU version which i texture with front
elevation images. The rear elevations can then be textured by sampling
similar sized sections of the BM model, which has been uploaded into
the SU model. For rows of homes that are 15-20 homes long, this gets a
little tiresome, but does end up producing a more aesthetically
pleasing model in the final analysis, IMHO. I have also used
unrelated, but similar rear-wall elevation image "captures" to grab
portions of the back sides of these buildings.
This stuff is a source of endless fascination for me, to my wife's
chagrin. Take my advice and "get away from it" now and then to bewith
the family!!
N. W. Perry
along with a slew of nearby buildings I made for Las Vegas (guess I
felt bad that much of downtown LV was unmodeled, as opposed to The
Strip which isn't even technically in the city). I also did part of
the nearby Golden Nugget complex, another very complex model that I
wasn't sure Building Maker could handle, but it definitely did!
I like your work in Philly too; nice to see someone focusing on all
the "normal" buildings that really make up the bulk of a neighborhood,
and paying close attention to detail as well. I myself haven't yet
made the leap into SketchUp to add Street View imagery and so on.
And yes, after heavy bouts of modeling, I definitely tend to take a
break from it for a while!
matsoya
Also, I noticed that since Building maker is available, the delays for
acceptance of SketchUp models has greatly increased!
Before it takes 2 or 3 days but now my models are still in reviewing
since 2 weeks!
Between quality and quantity, google seems to have chosen!