What do you get when you combine a team of seven students, one staff advisor, aerial photography and Google? A 3-D model of the Missouri S&T campus and the designation “supermodeler.”
The students spent hours creating 3-D models of campus using Google software tools as part of an international competition sponsored by Google. The payoff came in July when the team learned it was one of nine winners of the 2008 International Model Your Campus Competition.
Using Google SketchUp, a 3-D modeling program, and Photoshop, the team used high resolution aerial photography and floor plans of the campus to construct 3-D models of each building. Rules required the models to be accurate in scale and location, to focus on important identifying details, and to contain textures devoid of visual noise like trees, cars and people.
A panel of industry experts selected the winners. The Missouri S&T team consisted of four architectural engineering students (Matt Knuth, Nick Salmons, Adam Benzabeh and Chris Krueger), two computer engineering majors (Nick Thomson and Dan Welty) and one aerospace engineering major (Zack Geiser). Their advisor was Glenn Cotita, a space planning technician in the campus’s physical facilities department. Cotita hopes to use the models developed for the competition to construct an online campus map that prospective students and their parents can use to take a virtual tour of Missouri S&T.