We first blogged about PhotoSketch back in 2007 and it now looks like its intriguingly close to market. PhotoSketch by Brainstorm Technology LLC is a Google SketchUp plugin that enables the user to build 3D urban structures directly from photographs. It is aimed at architects, designers, and entertainment content creators allowing a new approach to create lightweight 3D models of existing buildings.
Brainstorm Technology have just uploaded three tutorials onto YouTube, suggesting that the plugins availability is imminent, tutorial 2 provides a good insight into the extracted points, camera views and the modelling process:
Sure you can model direct onto photographs already in SketchUp and indeed that is the basis of a lot of the models currently seen in Google Earth. Where Photoshetch seems to differ is the ability to determine camera positions and extract and match geometric features derived from a collection of overlapping photos of an urban scene.
We don’t have any details on pricing at the moment but we are looking to get hold of some more details, its worth keeping a watch on http://www.brainstormllc.com/
Thanks go to Phil for a comment in the original post for the heads up.
I have replied by email that they will launch the plugin later in June. The price will be $350 with a free 30-day trial period.