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. tilemaker can output them to individual files, or to .mbtiles or .pmtiles tile containers.

See an example of a vector tile map produced by tilemaker at tilemaker.org.

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

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

Other third-party code is bundled in the include/ directory.

You can then simply install with:

make
sudo make install

For detailed installation instructions for your operating system, see INSTALL.md.

tilemaker comes with configuration files compatible with the popular OpenMapTiles schema, and a demonstration map server. You'll run tilemaker to make vector tiles from your .osm.pbf source data. To create the tiles, run this from the tilemaker directory:

tilemaker /path/to/your/input.osm.pbf /path/to/your/output.mbtiles

tilemaker keeps everything in RAM by default. To process large areas without running out of memory, tell it to use temporary storage on SSD:

tilemaker /path/to/your/input.osm.pbf /path/to/your/output.mbtiles --store /path/to/your/ssd

To include sea tiles, create a directory called coastline in the same place you're running tilemaker from, and then save the files from https://osmdata.openstreetmap.de/download/water-polygons-split-4326.zip in it, such that tilemaker can find a file at coastline/water_polygons.shp.

(If you want to include optional small-scale landcover, create a landcover directory, and download the appropriate 10m files from 'Features' at https://www.naturalearthdata.com so that you have landcover/ne_10m_antarctic_ice_shelves_polys/ne_10m_antarctic_ice_shelves_polys.shp, landcover/ne_10m_urban_areas/ne_10m_urban_areas.shp, landcover/ne_10m_glaciated_areas/ne_10m_glaciated_areas.shp.)

Then, to serve your tiles using the demonstration server:

cd server
tilemaker-server /path/to/your/output.mbtiles

You can now navigate to http://localhost:8080/ and see your map!

Vector tiles contain (generally thematic) 'layers'. For example, your tiles might contain river, cycleway and railway layers. It's up to you what OSM data goes into each layer. You configure this in tilemaker with two files:

• a JSON file listing each layer, and the zoom levels at which to apply it
• a Lua program that looks at each node/way's tags, and places it into layers accordingly

You can read more about these in CONFIGURATION.md.

The JSON configuration and Lua processing files are specified with --config and --process respectively. Defaults are config.json and process.lua in the current directory. If there is no config.json and process.lua in the current directory, and you do not specify --config and --process, an error will result.

Read about tilemaker's runtime options in RUNNING.md.

You might also find these resources helpful:

• Read our introduction to vector tiles.
• See https://github.com/mapbox/awesome-vector-tiles for a list of renderers which support vector tiles.

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 continuous updates with the latest OSM data

Bug reports, suggestions and (especially!) pull requests are very welcome on the Github issue tracker. Please check the tracker to see if your issue is already known, and be nice. For questions, please use IRC (irc.oftc.net or https://irc.osm.org, channel #osm-dev) and https://community.osm.org.

Formatting: braces and indents as shown, hard tabs (4sp). (Yes, I know.) Please be conservative about adding dependencies or increasing the memory requirement.

tilemaker is maintained by Richard Fairhurst and supported by many contributors. We particularly celebrate the invaluable contributions of Wouter van Kleunen, who passed away in 2022.

Copyright tilemaker contributors, 2015-2024.

The tilemaker code is licensed as FTWPL; you may do anything you like with this code and there is no warranty.

Licenses of third-party libraries:

• sqlite_modern_cpp is licensed under MIT
• kaguya is licensed under the Boost Software Licence
• libpopcnt is licensed under BSD 2-clause
• pmtiles is licensed under BSD 3-clause
• streamvbyte is licensed under Apache 2
• polylabel is licensed under ISC
• protozero is licensed under BSD 2-clause
• vtzero is licensed under BSD 2-clause
• minunit is licensed under MIT
• Simple-Web-Server is licensed under MIT