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Is it possible to generate map tiles from QGIS?

I guess QGIS Server must have a way to do it, but is there a way to just generate the tiles and save them to disk?

With the new symbology renderer and scale-dependent rendering, QGIS is a powerful tool for generating dynamic maps.

Since I'm using the new-symbology renderer, qgis-mapnik is not an option, and since I'm using scale-dependent rendering, just generating a large georaster and using gdal2tiles to tile it is also not an option.

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    To all people who marked this question as one of their favorites: Why not upvote the question too?
    – underdark
    Aug 29, 2011 at 7:23

7 Answers 7

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For QGIS 3.8 or greater, generating tiles is built in - you can find it in the Processing tool box as Generate XYZ tiles (Directory) and Generate XYZ tiles (MBTiles).

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    This is the new best answer for 2019. Aug 28, 2019 at 17:31
  • Is there a way to do this from the command line interface? I am new with QGIS. I am using the latest version.
    – David
    Jan 24, 2020 at 4:51
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    You can see the command that ran by clicking on the History button on top of the Processing Toolbox. Copy and paste that into the Python console and it'll run it there. It'll look like processing.run("qgis:tilesxyzmbtiles".... Jan 30, 2020 at 16:41
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It is possible to generate tiles using python console, you can read about it here. Keep in mind, that you might need to modify the script.

However I would encourage you to use mapnik for generating tiles, as above mentioned qgis script did not work well for me.

Styling map is easy with xml for mapnik, you will not have any trouble with it. Some modifications for quantumnik will let you generate tiles directly from qgis.

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I recently came across a new plugin for QGIS 1.9 called QTiles. It's development was announced Dec 2012 on the QGIS Developer forum.

QTiles designed to generate raster tiles from QGIS projects according to the Slippy Map specification [0] and supports two output types: directory and ZIP-archive.

While I haven't personally used it, it looks very simple and easy to use.

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  • I have used it and it works for my purpose. Simple interface with QGIS and very practical if your work does not worth a python macro developpement.
    – kFly
    Mar 6, 2016 at 10:51
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Small update for 2017: I am generating the tiles with QMetaTiles plugin:

enter image description here

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I am not aware of tiles feature for QGIS. What you can do is to use QGIS Server with your project file and use TileCache to seed the tiles cache.

You can find some information about QGIS Server here: http://qgis.org/wiki/QGIS_Server_Tutorial and TileCache here: http://tilecache.org/

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I've written a slippy map tile generator for QGIS that runs from the Python console. It renders the map exactly as displayed in QGIS (without rendering errors). Output is 256px x 256px PNG, WGS-84 pseudo-Mercator, structured in either Google Maps or TMS format. Not a plug-in but easy to use (and to modify).

Slippy map tile generator for QGIS

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I think there isn't any good plugin in Quantum Gis to generate tiles. Qtiles is currently not available under plugins.qgis.org

The alternative TileCache Creator has lack of documentation (I don't achieved to use it) and it is restricted to projection EPSG:3857.

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    You may find the QTiles plugin at plugins.qgis.org/plugins/qtiles. In the plugin manager, you have to allow for experimental plugins to see and install it.
    – AndreJ
    Sep 5, 2015 at 4:53

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