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Dev tools · December 17, 2023

GA

Get any piece of Google Earth as a single normalized glTF 3D model

Google released an API in May to get fetch 3D Tiles of anywhere on Earth. Using this in standard 3D engines like Blender is tricky because (1) the tiles are in a geographic coordinate system (2) you get a lot of little tiles at varying quality levels I wanted to simplify this so all you need to do is get an API key, select a map region and a zoom level, and get one combined glTF file that you can throw into any engine. Especially if you're just prototyping and want to see how this data looks in your engine before investing in figuring out all the nuances of the API & coordinate system. (Note…

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In plain words

This tool simplifies Google's 3D Tiles API by fetching geographic data from anywhere on Earth and combining it into a single normalized glTF file compatible with standard 3D engines like Blender. Users provide an API key, select a map region and zoom level, and receive a unified model ready for prototyping. It eliminates the complexity of handling multiple tiles in geographic coordinate systems and varying quality levels, making it easier for developers to preview Earth data in their workflow before diving into API details.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Google released an API in May to get fetch 3D Tiles of anywhere on Earth. Using this in standard 3D engines like Blender is tricky because (1) the tiles are in a geographic coordinate system (2) you get a lot of little tiles at varying quality levels I wanted to simplify this so all you need to do is get an API key, select a map region and a zoom level, and get one combined glTF file that you can throw into any engine. Especially if you're just prototyping and want to see how this data looks in your engine before investing in figuring out all the nuances of the API & coordinate system. (Note that the API prohibits offline use, as in you can't distribute a processed glTF file like this. But you can do this preprocessing in memory whenever you're fetching tiles).

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