Google Maps 3D: Photogrammetry Mesh Clean-up

In this video I show you how to clean up a mesh imported from Google maps 3D. This tutorial covers mesh clean-up, removing materials, two methods for uv unwrapping, and how to bake colours from the old mesh to the new one.

You can see the previous video on how to extract Google maps 3D data here:

You can download the incredibly useful Meshlab here:

And here is the code for removing all the materials from the active object (make sure you have only one object selected when you run it):

import bpy

This process can now be automated! Check it out:

[Nicko]

This process can now be automated! Check it out:

[DodaGarcia]

I just spent five hours in frustration trying to clean up a neighborhood enough to import it into Unreal and was just about to give up and use one of those very templately-looking building packs, so this will absolutely save me. Thank you!

[SkyfighterZX]

Thank for the tutorial, really easy to follow and straight foward, i found i few issues and want to share how i circunvented them for other users.

Blender hangs/freezes during the UV Unwrap:
this is normal and you should let it sit there not clicking the window for some time, consider the specs of your pc and the size of your mesh, i would say worse case, leave it for 2-3 hours if needed, if it doesn't finish just scrap the method and use the alternative one in the video, it took seconds to me that way
(edit: i retried with a much smaller mesh and still took a long time but it worked this time, probably my pc not being able to compute such a large number of faces and vertices in a reasonable amount of time)

blender crashing while trying to bake the texture:
my blender was instantly crashing after i hit bake, i solved it by lowering the resolution from 8k to 4k, this solved it for me my pc is super old so maybe thats why i had issues

[PizzaTimeGamingChannel]

0:18 - Part 1 - Mesh
1:00 - Part 2 - Materials
2:04 - Part 3 - UV Map
3:21 - Part 3a - UV Map - Alternative Method
5:15 - Part 4 - Texture Baking

[jonclement]

i've never used blender but I enjoy watching people create! Great tutorial, you'll save people a lot of headaches

[AWSVids]

In one video, you’ve made at least a few other Blender tutorials I’ve watched obsolete. They’ve showed me the hard way to do things like retopoing and uv unwrapping... you come along and show me “Hey, there’s literally automatic solutions to these things.” Thank-you. Problem is, I no longer trust any other Blender tutorials but yours, and you don’t have enough! 😫

[k]

Tried the best way to get cleaner topology and found the blender remesh tool to be the best way. Gives you a very clean mesh with a decent topology.

[Missin]

Can't thank you enough for this tutorial. Brilliantly clear in the explanation even as a complete beginner with Blender!

[SteveWarner]

If you don't want to use the script to clean the materials, you can just select your object, then select a default cube (or any other primitive) and use the "Copy Material to Selected" from the drop down menu in the Materials panel. That will take whatever material the active object has and make every other selected object have that same material. If the active object only has one material (or even no materials), all selected objects will get just that one material. The hundreds of others will be removed from the object.

[LloydSummers]

This indeed worked very well for me, thank you. I had to get the right software configuration, and some extra cleanup steps around decimation, but within an hour I had 3 different city areas converted out. Thank you.

[alefedartagnan]

If the bake results in a black image, this is because the google maps tile material dont have color, only emission. Just change the Bake Type to "Emit"

[pastramichop]

This and the last video are INCREDIBLE. the efficiency in explanation is so good.

[rogermachin]

Hi all,
thanks for this tuto, Nicko16, nice !
so, i have just add two things at your process :
first) , after the smart UV, remake another Merge by distance, and another smart UV .
Second) in bake, selected to active: put extrusion à 0.0001 give a more beautyful texture .

[groupb-live]

You will never know how much time of life you have just given me. 🙏

[bim-age]

I found out that after the "merge vertex by distance" but before the "duplicate mesh" you can apply a "limited disolve by UV at 20/25°" really helps to clean and simplify the mesh too.

[elgalopinos]

This is a great video on how to process the mesh from the Google maps. I have a question... what about the night textures?. In your example, you have lots of buildings with windows...how do you handle the night textures?
Thank you very much for your great help, I really appreciate it

[hanhu]

Thanks for this tutorial. This is exactly the same thing we are trying to do!

[jojo-lprd]

hey this video helped me out a lot for just baking textures onto a new uv in general. I am not sure how blender does this (magic?) but if you import an fbx, make a copy of it, then redo the uvs (for example if it uses only part of a texture atlas) - then do the same technique shown in the video to bake the texture from the old model to the new one, it gives you a new texture that goes with your new uvs. Brilliant! The tip about 'ray distance' and 'margin' fixed some glitching.
Wonderful tutorial that has a ton of potential for enabling creativity - thank you!

[id]

With removing materials, I think it's easier and faster for those who don't like scripts to just select all the faces, apply the first material slot to everything, then use the remove unused materials option, and then remove the last remaining used material. Only a couple of steps and does not involve copying/pasting code or writing it yourself.

[tobymdev]

Any idea on a simple way of cleaning the messy topology?
Absolutely based tutorial, thank you.