How to position an image vertically?

[Mr_Bagpiper]

Hi there,

I'm trying to position an image in a vertical position rather than the usual horizontal overlay. Could you point me to the right direction?

Thanks in advance!

M

PS: I'm a newbie on this so pardon my ignorance if it's so obvious...

[Lrae]

Mr_Bagpiper,
Welcome to the BBS and Google Earth.

Grab the Diamond and rotate the overlay. More info can be found in the help section and here, near the bottom.

[barryhunter]

I've you mean vertically standing, billboard style then it isnt directly possible.

However see this thread where one user has done it by placing objects to make up the pixels of the image! (this doesnt scale well and seems to slow down the client no end)

The other option is a screen overlay, which stays in a fixed poition on screen and doesnt move with the world. Useful for a key or information panel. Search the docs for screen overlay as dont think can create in the client, has to be done by kml.

[HookEmHorns]

Depending on what you mean you either can't do it in the current version of GE (will this be put in sometime in the next year or so? a lot of people ask this question for overlaying images on buildings and so on... we can only speculate...), or it's a simple rotation as Lrae said.

Ok, so I've just reiterated things so far, but I have a couple small things to add. If you use Sid's "hack" that barry mentioned, you can probably speed things up a bit and make it more efficient by using styles that are referenced by ID (see early parts of the KML Documentation for this). Sid's awesome example uses all local styles (maybe he just did it this way or maybe this was before styles referenced by ID were available in KML).

There are some other "hacks" that can theoretically do image overlays that "stand up" so that they appear to cover the side of a 3D building, but they have only been talked about in theory and I haven't seen examples actually coded (they involve elaborate network links that update a screenoverlay based on the current camera position).

There might be ways through 3rd party software too. For example, someone who is familiar with SketchUp (I'm not) might know of a way to import an image into SketchUp, rotate it any way you want in three dimensional space, convert it to a GE object similar to what Sid did, and then export it. It wouldn't be a true "image", but would be good enough for many purposes, but you'd have to ask the SketchUp guys if this is possible or not.

[Mr_Bagpiper]

Thanks guys!

What a nice community! I'll research this and let the forum know if I find something
to add.

Best,

M

[smcq]

One of the early SketchUp examples showed artwork on a billboard, consisting of polygons. I expect it was exported from Illustrator CS, which can convert to DWG or DXF. I don't know of any other straightforward options for converting vector art to architectural formats.

While icons are not, strictly speaking, vertical (always facing the POV), I have successfully shown photographs as custom icons.

SMcQ