Mapbox RGB elevation format

Boyd

Have you given any consideration to importing/exporting elevation data in the Mapbox format, as described here? (Note - I tried to post actual links but the forum software gives me an error code)

blog.mapbox.com/global-elevation-data-6689f1d0ba65

There's a tutorial on creating your own data here, I use a similar workflow but with Globalmapper instead of qGIS

github.com/syncpoint/terrain-rgb

I start by exporting a 32-bit signed integer TIFF elevation grid from Globalmapper, then turning it into Mapbox RGB DEM with their rasterio command-line program using a command such as

% rio rgbify -b -10000 -i 0.1 dem_grid.tif dem_rgb.tif

I then take the resulting RGB .tif file and use Globalmapper's export web format to create a .png tileset. This works fine, but it would be much more efficient if it could all be done in Globalmapper, and would eliminate the need for me to store both an elevation grid and RGB file for the same map (the TIF files I'm currently working with can be hundreds of gigabytes and the tilesets can have millions of tiles).

Anyway, is there any chance of adding support for this in the future (maybe it's already possible but I don't know how)? The Mapbox format provides very responsive 3d terrain in a browser that can be queried for elevation. Here's an example of a 3d map on my site, created from 1-meter LIDAR DEM.

boydsmaps.com/#16.88/40.100212/-74.545340/mbx3dspectrum/-119.40/74.00

bmg_mike

I have created a new todo item, GM-13326, for updating the existing MB Tiles export option to include a Terrain-RGB option for tiling elevation data.

Boyd

Wow - thanks! Much appreciated 😎