Hi Jon,

Not long ago, with raster tiles and Tilemill, generating MBTiles files
had a similar feel to desktop publishing in the 90s/00s. Working with
vector tiles and Mapbox Studio feels similar but Mapbox hosts the tiles,
making it unsuitable for some applications. Generating your own can be
straightforward or very complicated and rendering times for a deep range of
zoom levels can be prohibitive for individuals working on a desktop. I've
had beefy AWS servers running for days, even weeks, to render tile pyramids.

Verify this on your own, but Andy Allan in the UK comes to mind as a clever
cartographer with vector tile generation in his revenue stream. Colorado
cartographer Gretchen Peterson certainly does a lot of design work in this
area although I'm not sure she herself generates tile bundles; quite
possible, it's been a few years since we've collaborated.

I've done this for paying clients and also for my own experimental
film/real-time cartography work, partly because I can inject data for my
own purposes and partly because I want to reduce tile latency as much as
possible and self-hosting gets you that.

Eric


On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 1:19 PM Jon Jablonski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Very belated continuation of this conversation:
>
> Eric summarizes nicely why one would want to / need to generate one’s own
> tiles.  And MBTiles looks like the file format to move them around.
>
> I’m still wondering: why would I buy prerendered MBTiles from a third
> party?  Is it because there are people who need them who don’t know how to
> make them?  Is this the sort of thing a clever cartographer gets paid for
> these days?
>
> -j
>
> Jon Jablonski
> [log in to unmask]
> Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory
> UCSB Library
>
>
>
> On Apr 5, 2021, at 11:47 AM, Eric Theise <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Jon,
>
> Generating your own vector tiles gives you enormous control over what
> features are included and therefore the size and performance of your
> tileset. Choosing what features to reveal and style and at what zoom level
> can be handled by the mapping library (e.g., Mapbox GL JS) but if you know
> you aren't going to need, say, building footprints and heights, leaving
> them out of the tiles altogether will have an effect on tile delivery.
> Alternately, if you need non-standard data (I'm thinking of a project I did
> using OpenStreetMap's seamark tags for maritime features), generating your
> own may be the best/only solution.
>
> I've worked quite a lot with OpenMapTiles. https://openmaptiles.org/
>
> Eric
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 11:38 AM Jon Jablonski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Huh.  I didn’t know buying pre-rendered tiles was a thing.  Is there an
>> advantage (other than convenience) over rendering your own?
>>
>>
>> Jon Jablonski
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Interdisciplinary Research Collaboratory
>> UCSB Library
>>
>>
>>
>> On Apr 5, 2021, at 7:29 AM, Diaz, Tony A. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Hello, any good sources for finding GIS files for the Copper Canyon of
>> Mexico?
>>
>> Especially looking for MBTiles files for the area,
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Tony Diaz
>> California Institute of Technology
>> Pasadena, CA
>>
>>
>>
>