Google Earth Studio: How to Render a Flyover

A flyover still does a job a still photo does not. The camera comes in from altitude, finds one building or one stretch of coast, and circles until the viewer knows the place. News opens, classroom lessons, and documentary scenes all use that move. Getting it used to mean a drone crew or a stock clip.

Google Earth Studio is Google’s browser tool for animating the satellite and 3D imagery in Google Earth. Google Earth is the globe you explore. Earth Studio is the timeline that turns a view of that globe into frames you can render.

What the License Allows

The tool is free to request. The footage is not free to drop into a campaign. Google’s FAQ and brand rules draw that line. When a Google Earth Studio render cannot go into the finished piece, use it as a storyboard for the path, the timing, and the framing, then generate the animation from assets you can publish.

Read that as a closed list. Google lists real estate films that show where listings are, tourism spots that sell a destination, brand films about a headquarters, website headers, social banners, and digital ads as off-limits. It allows research, education, nonprofit work, news, television, documentaries, and music videos without a permission request, as long as the credit stays on screen for the whole shot.

An instructional video can be monetized. A promotional one cannot, even with the watermark left in place. Google says it does not grant exceptions. These are their published rules, not a legal opinion. Google Maps satellite view falls under the same commercial limit.

Attribution is part of the license, not a courtesy. When you render, Earth Studio writes Google Earth and the imagery provider onto every frame. The provider name changes by place and by the data in view. You can move that credit with the Attribution control in the render settings. You cannot crop it, cover it, or park it in the end credits. You cannot use the imagery without the credit. You keep the intellectual property you already hold in what you make. Google, its licensors, or users own the imagery itself.

Open Earth Studio in Chrome

Earth Studio runs in Google Chrome on a Mac or a Windows PC. It does not run in other browsers. Turn on hardware acceleration before you start: Chrome settings, then System, then Use hardware acceleration when available. You need a Google account, and you have to request access. Google emails you whether or not you are accepted. Project files then save to that account. You can also download an Earth Studio project file .esp) and hand the project to someone else.

Build the Shot from a Quick Start

Open File, then New, then Quick Start. The same templates sit on the blank-project menu of the landing page. Each one becomes a full project you can render as it stands or keep editing on the timeline. Once you leave the steps, you edit on the timeline. You do not re-enter the guide.

• Zoom-To: a move from a higher altitude down to one framed view. The first and last frames match the camera you set in those steps.
• Point-to-Point: a move across as many as six places. Each place is the exact camera you framed, not a pin dropped on a map.
• Orbit: a circle around one point of interest.
• Spiral: that circle tightens and descends as it goes.
• Fly-To and Orbit: an approach from farther out that settles into the circle.

Search works the way Google Maps search works. Type a landmark or an address, frame it, and the template builds the path. Left-drag pans. Right-drag or use the scroll wheel to zoom. Hold Option on a Mac, or Alt on Windows, and drag to orbit the center of the view. Arrow keys change heading and tilt.

The player below is a third-party tutorial, How to create a CINEMATIC VIDEO using GOOGLE EARTH STUDIO, by Pavel Supanenka. Embedding is turned on, so this player is the permitted way to watch it here. It is not a stock clip. Do not download it, recut it, or treat it as footage you own. Anything you render yourself is still under Earth Studio’s license, not the tutorial’s.

Adjust the Camera on the Timeline

The viewport lets you move around the globe and previews the frames you will render. The timeline runs in frames across the top and in attribute tracks down the side. Project Settings, from the File menu or with Command-P on a Mac, sets the dimensions and the length. Changing one side keeps the aspect ratio unless you unlock it. The largest size the docs state is 4096 × 2304. The same dialog can switch the world from Earth to the Moon or Mars. The cloud renderer below doesn’t include those planets.

Add attributes when the move needs them. Field of view is the lens: wider to establish a city, narrower to compress a skyline. Time of day moves the sun, so you can get a low sun without waiting for one. Easing is its own section of the docs, and it is how a move speeds up or slows down instead of starting and stopping in a straight line. Map styles can draw roads, borders, and points of interest (POI). Those styles are excluded from a cloud render and a 360-degree spherical export. That export is for a virtual reality (VR) headset or a 360 video. Turn Time of Day on before you render, or a seam will show in the panorama.

Render the Frames and Keep the Credit

The public rendering guide is the current description of export. The editor itself opens only after Google accepts the access request, so this is the page you can check without a login.

A snapshot is one JPEG of the current view, at the project’s resolution. An animation is a different job. The dependable path is the renderer on your own machine. Earth Studio steps through the frames and writes an image sequence into a folder you choose. Chrome has to stay open, and Earth Studio has to be the focused tab. A tab in the background can fail the render. It fetches full-resolution imagery as it goes, so a slow connection slows the render. If a render stops, you can pick it up the next time you open the project.

Google’s docs point to Adobe Media Encoder or Adobe After Effects when you need to turn that image sequence into a video.

Cloud rendering is the other path. The page that describes it was last updated on 7 September 2021 and calls the feature experimental. You choose a video file, submit, and Google emails a download link. Google deletes the file after 10 days. The quota on that page is 18,000 frames a day, which Google describes as 10 minutes at 30 frames per second. A cloud render is an MP4 only. It skips the Moon and Mars, skips map styles, and does not include the JPEG sequence. Render locally while you are still changing the shot. A KML overlay can ride along in a cloud render only if every remote file it points to is reachable by Google’s crawler.

Leave texture quality on High unless a place shows obvious tiling. The docs say to try Normal or Low in that case. When a city looks soft, especially from a low camera angle, render at 3840 × 2160, a 4K frame, and scale it down in the editor. The same best-practices page says 3D cities hold together better from a tilt of about 40 to 60 degrees than from street level. Do not fly the camera into the side of a building. The mesh will not support it.

Use the Render as a Storyboard

If the piece teaches, reports, or tells a story that is not selling a product, a place, or a company, you are in the set of uses Google describes. News, television, film, documentaries, music videos, and education do not need a permission request. They do need the on-screen credit for every frame of Earth imagery. Google Earth Studio also asks you to register the project. Registration is not what creates the license. The published guidelines and the credit do that.

A commercial application is a different job. A listing video, a destination ad, a headquarters film, a website header, a social banner, and a digital ad cannot publish these frames, watermark or not. Google does not license that imagery for any commercial application. Use the Google Earth Studio render as a private storyboard, then generate your own animation.

Set the storyboard up this way.

• Lock the move. Write down the duration, the altitude, the direction, and the place the camera finds.
• Pull three stills. Save the open, the arrival, and the end in the project folder. Those frames are the board.
• Time the beats. Mark when the camera arrives and when it settles, so the new animation hits the same moments.
• Build the shot you can publish. Use models, type, and footage you already have the right to use.
• Leave the Earth frames out of the export. The commercial file doesn’t include them.

Do not paste those frames into the commercial edit, trace the imagery, or rebuild the mesh. Google forbids using Earth Studio output, or a third-party capture of it, to reconstruct 3D models or to create similar content. The storyboard carries the plan. The published animation has to be your own.

Google allows Google Earth imagery in company reports, proposals, and presentations, but still requires you to keep the credit.

Open Google Earth Studio