Google wants to enhance its Google Earth global mapping product with three-dimensional representations of pretty much every building on Earth. But how can even the $32 billion web search daikaiju manage such a feat?

1. Outsource the work to Indonesian orphanages?
2. Use Google Nuclear Arsenal to flatten all existing buildings, allowing Google to create 3D models as the new buildings are constructed?
3. Turn the creation of Google Maps models into a puzzle game, and cloudsource it?

The correct answer is (c).

Google Building Maker is a browser-based web app (based in Google SketchUp; Google Earth installation required) that lets you build 3D representations of buildings around the globe, using image resources provided by Google. Your work will be eyeballed by a Google staffer, and if approved will become a permanent part of Google Earth.

The app works by showing you several photos of a building (one you choose or one chosen for you), taken from various angles. You manipulate and resize a 3D bounding box to show Google Building Maker what image elements will go where on the 3D model — a task that will undoubtedly be automated within the next few years, but which right now requires a wetware engine (that’s you). The app assembles the model, which can be composed of a number of rectangular or triangular shapes, each skinned with a portion of a photo.

I can’t currently play with Google Building Maker, because I can’t install Google Earth at work. But let me know how you enjoyed it in the comments.

Some people think Google Building Maker will help the “terrorists.” I would call such people “brain-impaired Philistines,” but that’s unfair to the brain-impaired. And Philistines.

Via Google’s Lat Long Blog (with video); via CG Society.