The Hindu : National : Finally, a three-dimensional drawing tool for the rest of us

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 07, 2006

National

National

Finally, a three-dimensional drawing tool for the rest of us

Anand Parthasarthy

`SketchUP' allows lay users to create models of their home, inside-out

EARTHY GUYS!: Michael Jones and Amin Charaniya helped created the technology that drives the Google Earth global 3-D mapping application.

Bangalore: Mention 3-dimensional graphics and one thinks of all-those award winning animation films created by software whizzkids working with pricey tools like ``Maya'' and ``3-D Studio.'' It's not something that you and I would normally dream of attempting.

But thanks to increasingly user-friendly computer technology, we can finally get a feel for what 3-D art is all about.

What's more, a free tool that is now available to download, lets the lay (or as they say ``dummy'') user convert `flat' drawings of a house, or its interiors — or even a photo of a well known monument like the Taj Mahal — into a dramatic 3-D view that one can colour or enhance at will.

This is what the more `tech-savvy' architects and builders use these days, to breathe life into boring blueprints so that clients can see what their dream home will look like. Last week Google released a free version of ``SketchUp,'' a professional 3-D modelling tool, that can be downloaded from http://sketchup.google.com to any personal computer that runs a current flavour of Windows — Home, XP or 2000 — and includes a Video card, 128 megabytes of memory, 80 MB of hard disk space and the Internet Explorer browser.

Easy-to-use software

The software once downloaded occupies about 20 MB of space and is as easy to use as Windows Paint — that even kids are comfortable with.

Using just your mouse you can drag and drop lines, surfaces to create floor, walls, roof, furniture, giving them texture and colour. You can also see how the shadow will fall as the sun traverses your house.

Google acquired the right to the professional version just weeks ago when it bought a company called Last Software and decided to put out a `lite' version, free, to complement ``GoogleEarth,'' its ``3-D interface to the Planet.''

In fact, once having reconstructed your house, using SketchUp, you can then upload it to a website called the 3-D Warehouse which will place it exactly at the coordinates of your real house in a ``GoogleEarth'' view of your neighbourhood. If you are very public spirited, you can do the same for any public monument — the Vidhan Soudha, if you are in Bangalore, or the Vivekananda Rock if you are in Kanyakumari — for the benefit of the rest of the world.

``The aim is to constantly improve and refine our collective knowledge of planet earth,'' says Michael T. Jones, Chief Technologist for the Google Earth'' initiative.

``Wikipedia's graphic version''

He likens the 3-D Warehouse and GoogleEarth to a graphic version of Wikipedia — the web-based encyclopedia created by its users. Mr. Jones brought the technology behind the tool to Google when his earlier company, Keyhole, was acquired by the Net search leader.

Last week, he and his software colleague, Amin Charaniya, (also originally from Keyhole) were in India to hire top talent in cartography and remote sensing to fuel the next enhancements to GoogleEarth.

The Bangalore development centre of Google is already working on some Earth-related technologies.

In the first technology details about the Earth software, shared with the media in India, Mr. Jones explained that it made use of imagery that was up to 2 years old, in a variety of resolutions from 0.67 metres (that means every dot or pixels represents 67 centimetres on earth) obtained from satellite photos, to around 0.08 metres (8 cms/pixel) for pictures taken at a very small percentage of locations mostly in the Netherlands or over some U.S. cities.

Low resolution

All this imagery is available in the published domain and is of a resolution at least 20 times lower than what is required for military purposes, Mr Jones added. ``Nothing that a GoogleEarth search can throw up, will be either new or interesting for governments.

This is not a serious tool, but a 'fun thing' for ordinary people who like to see how their country or city or home area looks from the sky.''

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