TileMaker Reviews:Make OpenStreetMap vector tiles without the stack

About TileMaker

TileMaker is an open-source project that allows you to easily create tileable images and seamless textures. The tool is powered by Material Diffusion, and utilizes a cloud API provided by Replicate to run predictions. This is a useful resource for game developers who are looking for some easy copy-paste textures for their game assets. The project’s source code is available on GitHub for collaboration, and developers can even clone it to create their own AI-powered applications.

This is an open-source project that provides an interface for creating tileable images.

It works by using material stable diffusion, which was created by Tal Stramer. The model is hosted on Replicate, which exposes a cloud API for running predictions.

Tilemaker creates vector tiles (in Mapbox Vector Tile format) from an .osm.pbf planet extract, as typically downloaded from providers like Geofabrik. It aims to be ‘stack-free’: you need no database and there is only one executable to install.

Vector tiles are used by many in-browser/app renderers, and can also power server-side raster rendering. They enable on-the-fly style changes and greater interactivity, while imposing less of a storage burden. You can output them to individual files, or to a SQLite (.mbtiles) database.

How to install

Tilemaker is written in C++14. The chief dependencies are:

• Google Protocol Buffers
• Boost (latest version advised, 1.66 minimum)
• Lua (5.1 or later) or LuaJIT
• sqlite3
• shapelib
• rapidjson

sqlite_modern_cpp, and kaguya are bundled in the include/ directory.

You can then simply install with:

make
sudo make install

Why tilemaker?

You might use tilemaker if:

• You want to create vector tiles yourself, without a third-party contract
• You don’t want to host/maintain a database
• You want a flexible system capable of advanced OSM tag processing
• You want to create ready-to-go tiles for offline use

But don’t use tilemaker if:

• You want someone else to create and host the tiles for you
• You want the entire planet
• You want continuous updates with the latest OSM data

Tilemaker creates vector tiles in MBTiles format from a PBF file. This requires no database and there is only one executable to install.

Project website: https://tilemaker.org/

Source code: https://github.com/systemed/tilemaker