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.EricVery 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
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/EricHuh. I didn’t know buying pre-rendered tiles was a thing. Is there an advantage (other than convenience) over rendering your own?
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,ThanksTony DiazCalifornia Institute of TechnologyPasadena, CA