Google World Builder

The recent release of Google Sketchup 7.1 gave us powerful tools to easily create accurate models of urban contexts, with the integration of Street View for textures and better geo location of models.

And yersterday, Google released World Builder, a web based tool that enables users to easily model the buildings of 50 cities.

As you can see on the video it is very simple: you choose a regular volume to start with, and you adjust the width and height in views of the terrain from different angles, and voilá! you just modeled a part of the city, available for everyone at Google Earth and 3D Warehouse.

You can see the latest buildings modeled by users at 3D Warehouse… and if you refresh the page you will see how fast this is being populated.

Thank you Google :)