Google Earth has assembled the most comprehensive model of our planet from large-scale geological features, world landmarks to individual city buildings in 3D. While news media professionals have long used Google Earth’s classic desktop app to create content using this imagery, Earth Studio is professional-grade animation tool built from the ground up.

Modeled on industry-standard animation tools like Adobe After Effects, it utilizes keyframes and bezier curves to construct the animations, enabling fine grain control of the camera from space to ground-level. Creative professionals feel at home and can create beautiful animations, incredibly fast. Earth Studio is made for storytelling.

Google Earth Studio is a free web-based animation tool for Google Earth’s satellite and aerial (3D) imagery. It was developed with news media professionals and creative storytellers in mind, enabling these users to create compelling Earth content. Key features include:

- Keyframe Animation

Just like other industry-standard animation tools. Move the globe, set a keyframe, rinse and repeat. It’s that easy.

- Quick-Start Projects

Create an orbit, or fly from point-to-point. Select from five templates to get started - no animation experience needed.

- Animatable Effects

Animate custom attributes such as the Sun’s position, the camera’s field of view, and more.

- 3D Camera Export

Easily add map labels and pins in post-production. Earth Studio supports camera export to Adobe After Effects.

Furthermore, the tool has the ability to render images up to 4K and supports Keyhole Markup Language (KML). Anyone can sign up to preview Earth Studio at g.co/earthstudio

The strategy for Earth Studio is to empower storytellers with creative freedom through unprecedented control of Google Earth imagery, targeting news media and creator audiences.

By focusing on content creators/prosumers, Earth Studio has the potential to reach a lot of people through high-impact content such as news media. The narrow focus reflects creator tendencies; the majority of the user-generated content available online is created by a small portion of users. For example, ~3% of YouTube’s total user base creates all of the platform’s video content. Demand for film and video content also continues to rise with the prominence of online video/streaming platforms.

Earth Studio uses Chrome's NativeClient to achieve native-level graphics performance in a webpage, and the FileSystem API to store rendered image sequences. Aside from the 3D renderer, all of the tool’s code is written in Vanilla Javascript, and uses Closure JS form common components and dependency management.

In the beginning, Earth Studio was tested in various Google marketing projects. Notable marketing projects include anthem films for Google Earth VR in 2016 (2.3M+ views) and the relaunch of Google Earth in 2017 (20M+ views); and “Live Earth” wallpapers for Google Pixel 1, 2 & 3.

In 2015, we invited top U.S. news broadcasters to test the product in real-world production workflows, and for the next three years expanded our tester pool to top-tier news outlets globally. On December 7, 2018, we made Earth Studio available to anyone who wanted to sign up to preview to reach more journalists and storytellers.

News outlets around the world frequently use Earth Studio to produce supplementary content for news coverage, including locator maps, establishing shots, visualizations, and more. These include ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Globo, NBC and The New York Times.

Earth Studio has changed the news media landscape with new types of storytelling. For example, “10 Minutes. 12 Gunfire Bursts. 30 Videos. Mapping the Las Vegas Massacre.” by The New York Times won an Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches (Current News) in 2018. Earth Studio was a key storytelling mechanism in timelining how the events unfolded. Similarly, it was used in The Times’ 18-month investigation of President Trump’s finances, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2019.

It has also supported the filmmaking community with countless videos on YouTube, indie films like “The Dawn Wall” and the theatrical “Free Solo” (which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature this year).