MapTiler 1.0
About
MapTiler is a desktop application for rapid raster map publishing in the web 2.0 style. Your geodata are transformed to the tiles compatible with Google Maps and Earth - ready for publishing by simple uploading to any webserver.
Running
To run MapTiler on the Live DVD, click on the MapTiler link on the desktop, or you find it in the menu "Applications" -> "Graphics" -> "MapTiler".
Loading Data
MapTiler can open data in many common raster formats such as TIFF/GeoTIFF, MrSID, ECW, JPEG2000, Erdas HFA, NOAA BSB, JPEG...
Example Data
If you want to try the software functionality you can use any freely downloadable raster geodata such as: USGS maps or NOAA RNCs.
If you want a direct link to a small geotiff just to test MapTiler you can use this one: utm.tif
Usage of MapTiler
Start the application and follow the simple step by step tutorial for map publishing:
- First step is to select what tiles you want to generate, most popular are "Google Maps Compatible"
- In the second step you open your raster file
- Then you follow the tutorial further, in most cases the default values are OK, so just click on "Continue".
- In the end you should start rendering by clicking on the "Render" button
- Once the render is finished you can open the folder with generated tiles. You can also test the googlemaps.html or openlayers.html files, the ready to use viewers, which display your geodata as overlay of popular interactive web maps such as Google Maps.
The map tiles are loaded directly from your disk when you open the viewers. To publish the map on the Internet you need to only upload the folder with tiles to any webserver or Amazon S3. No extensive configuration on the server side is necessary, any simple hosting of files is fine. And you still get all the functionality such as panning and zooming, marker and vector displaying and all what JavaScript APIs offer.
Further reading