Building a healthier, greener Google

When it comes to greening our office buildings, we apply the same focus that we use for any of our products: put the user first. We want to create the healthiest work environments possible where Googlers can thrive and innovate. From concept through design, construction and operations, we create buildings that function like living and breathing systems by optimizing access to nature, clean air and daylight.

Since I arrived at Google in 2006, I’ve been part of a team working to create life-sustaining buildings that support the health and productivity of Googlers. We avoid materials that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other known toxins that may harm human health, so Googlers don’t have to worry about the air they’re breathing or the toxicity of the furniture, carpet or other materials in their workspaces. We also use dual stage air filtration systems to eliminate particulates and remaining VOCs, which further improves indoor air quality.

Since building materials don’t have ingredient labels, we’re pushing the industry to adopt product transparency practices that will lead to real market transformation. In North America, we purchase materials free of the Living Building Challenge Red List Materials and EPA Chemicals of Concern, and through the Pharos Project we ask our suppliers to meet strict transparency requirements.

We also strive to shrink our environmental footprint by investing in the most efficient heating, cooling and lighting systems. Throughout many of our offices, we’ve performed energy and water audits and implemented conservation measures to develop best practices that are applied to our offices worldwide. To the extent possible, we seek out renewable sources for the energy that we do use. One of the earliest projects I worked on at Google involved installing the first solar panels on campus back in 2007. They have the capacity to produce 1.6 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity for us, which supplies about 30 percent of our peak energy use on the buildings they cover.

With a little healthy competition, we’ve gotten Google’s offices around the world involved in greening our operations. Our internal Sustainable Pursuit program allows teams to earn points based on their office’s green performance—whether it’s through green cleaning programs, water efficiency or innovative waste management strategies. We use Google Apps to help us track progress toward our goals—which meet or exceed the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards—and share what we’ve learned among our global facilities teams.

We’re proud of our latest LEED Platinum achievement for the interior renovation of an office building at the Googleplex. While we have other LEED Platinum buildings in our portfolio, it’s a first for our headquarters and a first for the City of Mountain View. The interior renovation was designed by Boora Architects and built by XL Construction, using healthy building materials and practices. In fact, we now have more than 4.5 million square feet of building space around the world on deck to earn LEED Certification.

via Green blog

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Solar Permit AppEngine Examples

It was a milestone that took over 50 years, and at last solar panel manufacturers can produce their modules for less than $1/Watt. Now, the renewable energy community is faced with the dilemma that the permitting and interconnection costs, i.e. the paperwork, is a significant fraction of the cost of a rooftop installation. To deploy gigaWatts of solar energy in the United States these costs need to drop. In response, the Department of Energy has made permitting part of its Sun Shot Initiative and SolarTech has launched its Solar Permitting Challenge. And now Google is pleased to announce Solar Permitting Code Examples to make it faster for software developers to be productive using AppEngine.
A small team of Googlers (Alex Martelli, Arjun Satyapal, Clay Murphy, Luke Stone, Ross Koningstein and Dave Fork) pooled their 20% time to help out. We tried to make the task of building a web based permitting application easier by providing examples of essential tasks in AppEngine including login, creating new permit requests, uploading files, and gathering statistics. Two different versions, one in Python and one in Java, were created.
We were inspired to create this code example by the work that SolarTech has done to promote faster permitting through its Solar Permitting Challenge, and by the Solar ABCs efforts to produce a simple, uniform process for solar permitting. The user login screen for the Python code example appears below.
Navigant consulting estimates that there are 700 gigaWatts of solar power generation resource on rooftops in the United States. Overall, we believe that efforts to streamline the workflow connected with rooftop solar installations could reduce the costs of installations by 50 cents/Watt. Please help us help the industry make this a reality.
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Google Earth: Gigapixel panoramas

We’ve talked before about Gigapixel images and 3D Panoramas, but it’s not often that the two come together.

For the past year, Thomas Hayden has been shooting gigapixel-quality 3D panoramas, and the quality is stunning. For example, this KMZ file takes you to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) in Portland, OR. Be sure to turn on the “360Cities” layer under the main “Gallery” layer.

He has recently completed shooting a 42 image set virtual tour of the museum using a GigaPan that allows him to capture very high resolution panoramas. While most GigaPan images you see these days are multi-GigaPixel “framed” panormas, he specializes in almost completely spherical location coverage. These are as high resolution as many popular gigapan images, an order of magnitude higher resolution than the standard methods for virtual tour photography. The standard methods compose a 360 from 5 or 6 individual photos, while he composed these using 112 to 126 individual 8 MP images. The average size of one of his 360s is around 220 MegaPixels (.2 GigaPixels). This resolution allows the viewer to zoom in on very fine details, and in the case of the Manuevering Room of the USS Blueback fast-attack submarine on exhibit at OMSI, allows the viewer to examine the switches, dials, and gauges that move the boat.

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His first project was in creating a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon by rafting the Colorado River for 18 days last April. There are 21 images in all as part of Grand Canyon GigaView that can be found along the river over 225 miles from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek. All of the images very near to the river in the Grand Canyon that are visible on Google Earth are part of Grand Canyon GigaView. Look for the 360Cities red icons near this KMZ file. He has also built a Tumblr blog that serves as a day-by-day trip report and a place to display the media. The imagery from the Grand Canyon is absolutely stunning:

grand-canyon.jpg

For those of you interested in the specifics of how he was able to capture the imagery for these panoramas, he’s explained his equipment in detail:

The equipment I use is half of my story, actually. I generate these images with a five year old, low end, prosumer camera (Canon Powershot S5 IS 8MP) and a GigaPan Epic 100 robotic camera mount. The GigaPan unit is designed to handle almost any brand of point and shoot camera, and together with software, become a high resolution imaging device. The concept spun out of NASA’s Mars Rover Missions where they needed small cameras (low power, light weight) to do great things. The primary resource they knew they would have on Mars was time, so the created this process for turning low end cameras into useful imagers by compositing back on earth. With money from Google, Carnegie Mellon University started the program initially with National Geographic and NASA called the Global Connection Project, which spun out into a company called GigaPan Systems to produce and market an affordable robot+software package that would make thise kind of imaging within reach of the average consumer. In the last year, GigaPan has also produced a beefier unit to manager larger DSLR prosumer cameras and their telephoto lenses.

My Grand Canyon GigaView project is not-for-profit and GigaPan supported the project by providing the Epic 100 I still use today. NRS supplied me with whitewater gear and PNY supplied me a all the SD cards I will ever need, so I had some sponsorship. I was invited on the Grand Canyon Private River Trip permit that my old raft guiding buddy had won last year in the newly formed private permit lottery system that GCNP devised in 2007 to deal with the 25 year waiting list that had become the average wait for a private rafting permit. Because I used to guide and have many friends in the river communities of the Colorado Plateau, this was my second opportunity to row a boat down the Grand Canyon through 225 river miles, 182 named named rapids, and 3 of the largest drops in North America.

Most of the images are inner canyon landscapes, but when there are people to be found in them, they are usually my fiance and I posing on a overhanging ledge or peering around a bush to see if the GigaPan had finished shooting yet, only to get caught by the robot.

posing.jpg

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SketchUp Pro Case Study: Randy Wilkins

Randy Wilkins is a Hollywood veteran who’s worked on such films as “TRON: Legacy”, “The Social Network”, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Catch Me if You Can”. We sat down with Randy to find out more about what he does and how he incorporates SketchUp (and our recently released Advanced Camera Tools plugin) into his workflow.

Where did you grow up and where do you live and work now?

I grew up in Ohio and moved out to Los Angeles to go to graduate school. I started working in the film industry immediately afterward.

What did you study in school?

My favorite subjects were architecture, history and woodworking. Of the three, I decided architecture was the best career choice. That is, it was until I fell in love with cameras. I ended up dropping out of school to work as a photographer and by the time I returned to school I had decided to get a degree in film. I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Cinema from the Ohio State University. During my senior year, my thesis film at OSU was selected as a finalist for a Student Oscar. That led to a Directing Fellowship at The American Film Institute.

What do you do for a living?

Primarily, I work as a Set Designer in the film industry here in Los Angeles. I realized that being an independent filmmaker is a tough way to pay the bills; luckily, I sort of fell into set design. It was a good fit considering my architectural , drafting and photography experience and it has allowed me to work in the industry while I pursue my own films.

What projects have your worked on that folks might have heard about?

I’ve worked on over 50 films and television series over the years. The great thing about set design is that you’re always doing something different and you’re always learning something new. I just finished working on “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” for Production Designer Don Burt, and I also recently worked on “The Social Network” and “TRON: Legacy”.

Which of your projects are you most proud of?

I’d have to say “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button” is one of the films I’m most proud to have worked on. I’ll always jump at a chance to do historical or classical architecture. I was also happy with the way “Catch Me If You Can” turned out. It was a very tough picture from our perspective. There were over 170 sets to create during a 70 day shoot. The fact that they were all period 1960’s and 70’s pieces made it a real challenge.

How did you first hear about SketchUp?

I first heard about SketchUp in 2003 when I saw another Set Designer using it. I was impressed with how simple it seemed to be to learn and how fast she could generate a model. It’s very hard for people who aren’t used to looking at orthographic drawings to be able to visualize them in three dimensions. We always used to build a lot of foamcore models, which can be very time consuming. To be able to quickly build something in 3D to show someone is a lifesaver when you’re working on a tight schedule.

I started learning the program in 2004 but didn’t become really proficient with it until I took a class from Mike Tadros, which was great. He’s an excellent instructor. After that I was doing most of my preliminary design work in SketchUp and then executing the drawings by hand. Until recently, most Set Designers were drawing by hand for a variety of reasons. The image below is an example of a traditional drawing for film scenery. We often do a lot of character scenery that requires us to show age or organic shapes and that’s hard to do with AutoCAD.

An example of a typical hand drawing for film scenery: A fireplace detail from “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button”

The next three images are good examples of some of the things I love about LayOut. I can add textures, shading or even paste in some of my hand drawings into the documents. They just have a lot more “life” than CAD drawings do.

Measured drawings created in LayOut, based on a model by Popular Woodworking editor Christopher Schwarz.
A drawing of the collapsing chimney from “The Social Network“

How does SketchUp relate to what you do?

Since LayOut was added to Sketchup Pro, I pretty much do 95% of all my work in SketchUp and LayOut, and I’m always finding new ways to use it. We have to create a lot of our drawings from photographs, either to recreate a historic building or furniture piece, or to match a location for sets built on stage or on a backlot.

People are slowly realizing that SketchUp is much more than a modeling program. I still get surprised responses from some people when they see a drawing package I’ve done in SketchUp. I did some work last year for the television series “Glee”. They wanted to recreate the theater they used for the first season, so I surveyed the location and modeled a slightly smaller version in SketchUp and executed the drawings in LayOut. The Key Grip looked at the perspective sections I included with the drawings and said, “What program did you do this with?” He was surprised when I told him it was SketchUp.

Perspectives of the theater set model from Glee.
Plan view of Glee theater stage set.

The film “Catch Me If You Can” opens with a recreation of a popular television show from the 70’s called “To Tell The Truth”. Production Designer Jeannine Oppewall had me create construction drawings to build a replica of the original set that was accurate enough to matte-in portions of video from the original show. The original drawings were long gone and the only reference I had was a still from the video.

We have a technique called back-projection which basically uses the rules of perspective in reverse, as in Figure 5. From a photo we can figure out the scale to create measured drawings as well as determine the lens used, camera height and tilt and so on. I figured out it was much easier to do the process in SketchUp, where I could create the plan view right in the model, to scale (see below).

An example of back-projection calculations in pencil.
A back-projection done in SketchUp.

I’m currently working for Darren Gilford who was the Production Designer for “TRON:Legacy” and is also a big proponent of SketchUp. He does most of his design work in SketchUp which makes it great when he passes his models on to the Set Designers. There’s no scaling or back-projection involved—I know exactly what he wants.

Another SketchUp tool I use a lot is Match Photo, which is a nice companion to doing a back-projection. I’ve been using it to create models of buildings that no longer exist. I have a film called “A Question Of Loyalty” which did really well on the festival circuit and several people encouraged me to expand it into a feature -length film. It takes place in Germany and deals with the loss of civil liberties in the late 1930’s. It’s set mostly in an apartment of the Reitlinger House designed by the architect Friedrich Weinbrenner which was destroyed during World War II. I used several period photos and Weinbrenner’s original plan to reconstruct a SketchUp model to determine how much of the building needed to be a physical set and how much could be digital (below).

LayOut drawing of the reconstructed Reitlinger building.

Is there a specific time you can recall when SketchUp was particularly important/helpful?

There were several times while I was working on the television show “Heroes” that I really began to see the potential of the program. The show was very ambitious; it was like making a feature film every eight days.

For one episode, we had to create an internment camp similar to Manzanar. We had three days to do the design and drawings and eight days to build it. After it was shot, the construction crew and painters had 14 hours to add 45 years of age. The Production Designer Ruth Ammon gave me sketches of what she wanted as she was leaving for the location scout of the build site. I asked her to send me the GPS coordinates of the center of the camp and a photo showing the orientation. By the time they got back from the scout I had downloaded the site with the topography from Google Earth, dropped the camp model onto it and laid in the new road. It saved me at least two days.

SketchUp model of camp for “Heroes”
Finished camp
Camp after being “aged” 45 years

The program is also great for designing photo backings or translites for stage work.
We used to lay them out on paper but doing them in SketchUp is great because there isn’t any guess work. You can “paint” the photos of the location on the wall outside the model at the right scale and show the Production Designer exactly what it will look like.

A layout for a photo backing.
The finished translite when hung on the stage


How are you using the Advanced Camera Tools plugin in your work?

I’ve been hoping for an update to the old Film & Stage plugin for some time now and was really excited to learn Google was working on it. It really was the missing piece of the package for me. I can now say that SketchUp really is the perfect software for film design. There is very little I can think of that I can’t do with it.

When you have a digital model up on the screen, the first thing a Production Designer or Director or DP will ask is, “What focal length is that?” Because the most important thing really is: What is the camera going to see? Everything else for us is secondary. If it can’t be shot it won’t work.

I had a work-around process for using camera angles that I’ve been using but it’s cumbersome. The new Advanced Camera Tools plugin is fantastic. I can change the focal length while in the camera mode and not have the camera move its current position, or I can change the aspect ratio or tilt or height without having to reposition anything. And having the data right on the screen is a big help.

This means SketchUp is now very useful for the other two “VIS’s”. In the industry, visualization is now broken up into three parts: D-VIZ (Design Visualization), PRE-VIZ and POST-VIZ. D-VIZ is the traditional pre-production design phase where the sets and environments are created and SketchUp is already the most-used modeling program in that respect.

Pre- and Post-visualization are more concerned with exactly what is seen through the camera and combining real and computer-generated elements. With the Advanced Camera Tools, you can now view a model and be very specific as to camera position, aspect ratio and lens focal length. That for me was the missing piece of the software.

What advantages does it give you over other similar programs?

For a software package that would give you the same ability to use specific camera data and lens data you would have to consider a much more expensive program. To get data and camera control comparable to the new Advanced Camera Tools I would have had to bring the model into another program such as Maya or Rhino. Now I don’t need to go to that trouble.

It also suddenly becomes a very much more useful tool for storyboarding. There are a number of programs such as Frame Forger that are popular 3D storyboarding programs because they provide specific camera and lens data. You now have all those capabilities with SketchUp. And when you create those boards in LayOut, they are automatically updated when there are changes to the model. That’s a huge advantage.

I’m going to begin teaching seminars on Visualization For Filmmakers (email if you’re interested) here in Los Angeles and almost all of the curriculum has been created in SketchUp or LayOut. The ACT plugin will be very useful for the sections when I’ll talk about both lenses and digital storyboarding.

Focal length comparison diagram

What would advice would you give to aspiring set designers and filmmakers?

I always recommend that people who want to direct take an acting class such as the Judith Weston Acting Studio, which is excellent. You’ll have more empathy for actors and it will be easier to communicate with them. Even if you want to make animated films or create CG characters, understanding the acting process and character development will make your digital characters more emotionally real. Learn about what the camera does. The book “Film Directing: Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen” is a good resource, as is “Digital Moviemaking 3.0“.

Make short films. You used to have to go to film school just to have access to the equipment you needed to make a good looking film but not anymore. Today, all the equipment you need to shoot and edit in your own home is affordable.

Traditionally, Production Designers got their start as Art Directors or Set Designers, but now they come from all fields: illustration, product design, visual effects and others. The Art Directors Guild publishes a magazine called Perspective which is available online and contains articles about the design of current films. You’ll need to be able to communicate visually, which means drawing and modeling are both very useful skills as well as the ability to read architectural drawings. Study architecture, design, history, technology. There’s nothing you’ll learn that won’t be useful. The Production Designer, to be really effective, should know the basics about all the other aspects of film making.

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Mini-Newsletter From Your Google Chrome Security Team

We’re always working hard to enhance the Chrome browser with bug fixes, new defenses and new features. The release of Chrome 10 is no different, and there are some items worth highlighting:
Chrome 10: Flash sandboxing
With Chrome 10, our first cut of the previously announced Flash sandboxing initiative is now enabled by default for the Windows platform on Vista and newer. Additionally, because we automatically update Flash to the latest and most secure version, this should provide useful defense in depth.
Chrome 10: Out-of-date plug-in warnings
As we previously mentioned, we believe that some of the most significant opportunities to increase user security revolve around plugins. We’ve made a number of improvements in this area, including actively encouraging users to update their plug-ins to the most secure version. Chrome now detects when a plug-in is out of date and blocks it with a simple infobar. This infobar helps guide the user towards updating their plug-in with the latest security fixes.
Chrome 10: Plug-in blocking enhancements
Some of our more advanced users prefer fine-grained control over which plug-ins they wish to run — which can have security and privacy benefits. Chrome has long had a feature which blocks plug-ins by default (Wrench menu -> Preferences -> Under the hood -> Content Settings -> Plug-ins). We’ve improved this feature by adding a context menu to the blocked plug-in placeholder. This menu lets users control which plug-ins do and do not run. Using a context menu helps prevent clickjacking attacks that try to bypass the block. Plug-in placeholders can also be hidden (for example, if they are floating over and obscuring real content), and the actual plug-in that wishes to run is made apparent.
Chromium Security Rewards program still going strong
We mentioned in passing in the 9.0.597.107 release notes that our rewards program has passed $100,000 of rewards. We’d like to re-iterate our thanks to all the named researchers in our Hall of Fame. We’re continually delighted with the stream of interesting and clever bugs that we receive, so it will be exciting to see what the rest of 2011 brings. Remember, we love giving out money!
Still hiring!
We are always looking to expand the Google Chrome Security Team, and we’re looking for a wide range of talents. We can promise exciting and varied work, working to protect hundreds of millions of users and working alongside the best in the industry. Why not have a look at our job posting?
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