Earth Studio Tools for Blender - Free Add-on (w/ 3D KML import)

[Music] in this video we'll introduce the new earth studio tools add-on for blender with this add-on you'll be able to import google earth studio projects add kml routes to the 3d environment and integrate with earth studio environments with masking tools we'll begin by creating a google earth studio project with a kml file we'll then import the project into blender using the earth studio tools we'll then add a kml file and composite and render in blender we're planning some additional videos for this series to showcase additional features and workflow of earth studio tools to get started we'll download the add-on from github with the link in the description below we'll select the code button and then download zip we'll download the file to our computer we'll then extract all from the zip file and within the folder is gespanel.py this is the add-on to be added to blender which we'll do in a few minutes we'll now open up google earth pro to create a kml file we're going to go to san francisco for this example zooming in on the city center we're going to go to telegraph hill which has an altitude of around 275 feet for the parking lot using the placemark tool we're going to create a new placemark at the parking lot and name it end this will be our endpoint for our route we're then going to head over to the palace of the fine arts next to the presidio this is going to be our start we'll create a new place mark and call this one start using the direction function built into google earth pro or right mouse click on start and select directions from here we'll then select the end point and select directions 2 here this will open up the directions panel which will conveniently create a route for us from the start to the end we'll then click on the copy results to my place button and collapse the directions window this has now copied three different routes from the start to the end we'll select the one that we prefer and then select the route we'll right mouse click on it and select save as we'll then give it a name and select a kml format we'll now jump over to google earth studio and create our project [Music] in google earth studio we'll create a new project and we'll call this one san fran we're going to use the hd settings for this project from the file menu we'll select import and then overlay we'll then select the kml file that we created double clicking on the route it will take us to the location in san francisco where we can review the route that we created as we made no color or line settings in google earth pro the line will come in as a thin white line we'll now set up our project for rendering and integration into blender first thing we'll need to do is create a starting track point at the beginning of the route this will allow us to align the kml file in blender with the google earth studio data we can now create our scene for the first frame i'm going to use the set camera target and create a keyframe then going to rotate around the rotunda and set another keyframe maintaining the same camera target we then want to be able to follow the route along the timeline so we'll set the camera target along various points along the route while also setting keyframes [Music] using the camera target to aim the camera allows for smooth transitions between keyframes i'm just going to go through the route and add various camera targets as well as keyframes to finish up this animation and we'll finish with a nice shot of telegraph hill with the golden gate bridge in the background do a quick review of the animation and that looks good so we'll just add some time of day settings we'll uh finish off with a sunset and then we'll go to the beginning and go a little bit earlier in the day and that all looks good so now we're ready to render under normal circumstances i'd like to use the cloud rendering and create a mp4 video however uh for this application we'll be using some masking techniques and we'll need the stability and consistency of the image sequence jpeg format so we'll be rendering this in hd and we'll make sure that we have the 3d tracking data set to json we'll be using the json file to import into blender and once that's finished rendering we're going to open up blender and i'm using a version 2.83 here we'll just click on the background and delete our default cube we're now going to import earth studio tools which will appear on the properties panel on the side here so we'll go to edit and then preferences then using the add-on tab we'll click on install we'll now navigate to where we downloaded the gespanel.py file we'll select it and install add-on after a few moments it will appear you can drop down and see the information of the add-on you want to make sure that it's selected and you'll notice on the right hand side in the panel we now have an earth studio tab we can close that window and jump over to earth studio where we can import our google earth studio project first thing we'll be doing is selecting our image sequence it can also import the mp4 files you would select the first file of your image sequence we'll then select our json file so again navigating to the file that we downloaded with the images and then we just click on the import earth studio button this will import all of the images the camera as well as any tracking data now in this particular instance we only have one item which was our first tracking point as indicated here as a plane after you imported an earth studio project the kml route import export panel will become accessible we're going to select our kml file this is the same file we used in earth studio the snap to function will allow you to select which track point to snap the beginning of the kml route to in this example we're going to select start the curve selector allows you to select poly or nurbs nurbs will smooth out the corners of your route the bevel depth is the thickness of the route line in this case we're going to use 0.05 the add elevation option allows you to add additional elevation to the route for our example here we're going to actually leave it at zero the follow terrain toggle will allow you to add additional elevation information that can be used in the route since we haven't yet set up our terrain information we're going to deselect it for now then we'll click on the import kml route this will import the route information based on the parameters we've set a route imported without terrain information will all be on the same altitude as the snap 2 track point if your kml file does contain elevation information that data will be used to draw the route an example of this use would be flight data information in this example i'm expanding the ges path which is apparent for the route path the route path is the object that we'll be primarily using in this particular case i changed the color to green i'm also going to change the lighting conditions to sunlight so that we have consistent shading throughout the route as you can see in this example because we don't have any drain information the route looks okay when it's on the flat surfaces but as soon as we start reaching elevations the path seems to slide underneath the topography to fix this we're going to use google earth studio to create elevation breadcrumbs this technique will supply us with a json file with elevation information along the route quite simply we add track points along the route at regular intervals the earth studio tools add-on in blender will read the json file with these track points and align them with the route kml file for best results place the track point along the line where there is a high likelihood of elevation change or where there is a high likelihood of points in the kml file for example in a corner or at an intersection for this particular project we'll probably end up with around 20 or 30 different track points if you find you've misplaced a track point or it doesn't contain correct information you can always go back and readjust your track points so once we've set up our track points we're going to export the tracking data so we'll go to file export and 3d tracking data we'll then make sure that we have selected as a json file and we'll give it a distinct name so we'll call this one san fran underscore track and we'll click on export and we'll save that in the same folder as we had before so now switching back to blender let's get rid of that uh previous route so we'll select the parent all the way through the hierarchy there and delete it uh we'll use the same kml file with the same settings but this time we're going to use the follow terrain we'll select our new json file the underscore track json and we'll click accept a couple new options here have appeared one is point reduction which we're going to leave at zero this means that it will keep the integrity of the kml file without reducing any uh similar points then we're going to use the match proximity this allows some flexibility in our accuracy of setting the track points up on the route so it will look within a proximity of two meters of a particular point within the kml file and then we'll click import kml route and we can see now that the route follows the terrain up the hill of telegraph hill you'll find that the match proximity value can affect the look of the elevation it's recommended to try a variety of different values in this case we use two meters for a little bit of a smoother transition we probably could have used one meter we'll now do some basic styling and fine tuning of the route inside the ges path parent is the route path this is a curve object with a variety of different functions to alter its appearance by selecting the curve tab we can see the variety of options available to us we'll be focusing primarily on the bevel start and end as well as the order you and resolution u values in future videos we'll play with some of the other settings to provide a different look back to the earth studio panel we're going to expand the modified kml export this section will create a modified kml file that we can use in google earth studio as a mask for our route this mask will allow the route to integrate with the 3d models within google or studio first we'll select a destination folder for our modified kml file then we'll give the route a name this will be our file name also next item is the line width this is the width of the actual route that will be overlaid on google earth studio and here we can use the actual physical width so that the line does not vary in size based on the camera position the line elevation is how high the line will appear in google earth studio this will aid in masking the height of the actual 3d route and lastly is our mask color i'm going to leave it at green here we'll click on the export modified kml route button and we can switch back over to google earth studio to render our mask in the same project we'll go to file import and then select overlay and select our new modified kml file as you can see it's laid down a green path we'll now render this project in a separate uh folder we'll call this one san fran green and again we're going to be using the image sequence when combined with our original render it will punch out the green path and allow our route to interact with the 3d objects within google or studio while those files are rendering we'll stylize and reveal our route in the animation switching back into blender we'll select the route path and we'll add a material let's see how this magenta looks we now want to create the reveal this is achieved by adjusting the bevel start and bevel end values and keyframing along the animation by pressing the i key we'll place a keyframe here and set it to zero then moving ahead the animation we'll set it to one where we want the animation to end and set a keyframe here we can then inspect the automatic tweening between the frames and make any adjustments along the way by setting additional keyframes you may also want to adjust your bevel mapping start and end these are used to calculate the ratio of the line being revealed i prefer the spline method once we finish keyframing we can go on to the compositing and rendering of the animation switching over to the rendering tab we'll do a sample render under the default settings the film transparency is turned off we'll turn this on as you can see it only renders the route and not the background we're going to use the compositing tab to combine our background image with the rendered results first select the use nodes toggle you can now see the rendered layers node combined with the composite node we're going to add the background image to our render press shift a then select input and movie clip from the movie clip drop down on the bottom left we'll select the movie clip that we have previously loaded now we'll combine the layers press shift a color and then alpha over we'll now connect the movie clip to the alpha over let's give it a test render and you can see that we've got our order mixed up so we'll switch the image inputs and do another test render we've now combined the google earth studio images with our rendered images we're now going to add the mask that we created a few moments ago to better visualize this we're going to create a new output node this is the viewer node we can then connect our final image to the output viewer we're then going to create a duplicate of our movie clip by selecting it and pressing shift d we'll make another duplicate again by pressing shift d again with our top left movie clip we're going to replace the footage with our green screen footage select the open button and then the first image in the sequence we're now going to create our mask we'll press shift a then select matte and then difference key this will create a mask based on the difference between our green screen rendering and our original rendering we'll now connect the two movie clips to the difference key we'll then use this mask to combine with the original image to cut out the keyed area press shift a then converter then set alpha we'll then connect the image of our duplicate movie clip and we'll also connect the output matte to the alpha we'll have a look at the final image by dragging it to our viewer and this is actually the opposite of the results that we're looking for so we'll add an inverter so we'll press shift a and then color and then invert and we'll drag that on the matte to alpha line we now combine these images by adding another alpha over and we'll drag our outputs in there and then we'll have a look at our viewer and we can see that it is appearing almost correctly although we do have some ghosting on our path so we'll make some adjustments to our difference key to see if this uh fixes our ghosting issue and it looks like the issue perhaps is somewhere else so we'll um let's just make sure that we have our convert premol on and i believe the issue is actually in our invert so if we were to switch this to rgb and we'll make a small adjustment to our fall off as well here just to smooth the edge and let's go back to the layout and fix a few more small items here we'll fix our slice here this is generally because you have two points over top of each other at the beginning or at the end of a route so we'll just uh select uh in edit mode and then zoom in we can see we got our beginning point here uh and we can pull one out and we can see that it uh straightens things out a little bit so since it's a duplicate we'll just uh delete it there and now that i look at this it's looking a little bit too much like bubble gum so let's change the color we'll give it a nice green color as well we'll add a little bit of shininess to the surface uh and then lastly we'll want to clean up some of our joints the route path selected we'll go to the active spline section and let's zoom in on one of the areas here where we have a bit of a joint issue and we can adjust our order u and resolution u values to smooth things out a little bit and you can see here there's a number of different settings to give you a bit of a different look [Music] and that looks good so now we're ready to render we'll do a quick test render here and that looks good so we're going to set this one up to render into a video file so in the output properties tab we're going to set up the parameters for this video so we'll make sure our frame rate is set to 30 frames per second we'll then set up the file format as an ffmpeg video then for the container we're going to use an mpeg4 in the video kodak we're going to use the h.264 we'll set that to high quality as well and then by selecting the render animation from the menu we'll be creating a video format file directly from blender [Music] if you have any questions on how to use the earth studio tools please feel free to leave a comment below we'll be coming out with some more videos on how to stylize the route as well as how to use the route for animations [Music] if you enjoyed this video please make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel thanks for watching and we'll see you [Music] [Applause] soon [Music] foreign

Channel: Imagiscope Tech

Views: 26,840

Rating: 4.9749999 out of 5

Keywords: google earth studio, blender, kml, kml route

Id: J21nqXtFWKw

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021