Virtual Tours out of MAX into Google Earth

[Neil Woodhouse]

Hi Guys'

 

I've just been asked by a client if we can produce a V-Tour of a development that can be run on Google Earth.

 

Never been asked this one before.

 

Anybody any knowledge experience of this? The V-Tour part is standard for us, but running it in Google Earth is a first.

 

Regards

 

Neil

[Dave Buchhofer]

i've seen things in the past that leads me to say its 'possible' at the least can't say as i've done it myself, nor would i really want to be restricted to google earths navigation scheme.. but whatever. using their kml layers you could get some interesting phasing type effects pretty easy though

[Chad Warner]

First thing I would do is go here:

http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/

They have a lot of pretty cool tutorials on google earth techniques.

 

Other than that, I think you'd have to export from Max to a KML file. If you have or have used Sketchup, you can go from Max to Sketchup to Google Earth, but then you're limited by Sketchup's materials.

[AJLynn]

Do you have any experience with texture baking? There was one guy who showed some work here a couple years ago, don't ask me to find it again cause I can't, where he did Sketchup modeling, exported a 3DS file to Max, baked the textures then exported back to Sketchup, where he then had a Max-rendered Sketchup scene that he could walk around and crank out drawings with linework and interesting textures.

 

A similar technique could work here - you wouldn't have to model in Sketchup but you'd need to work in low poly in Max, in a game developer style, then bake, send to Sketchup (I think the free version would work for this) and use Sketchup to make the Google Earth files.

[Neil Woodhouse]

Thanks guys,

 

Excellant answers as usual. I'll have a look at Digital Urban and have a 'play' with Sketchup.

 

I can now go back to my client with a 'yes' answer.

 

Thanks again.