GeoPixer

Mapping SDK for Spatial Bay: GIS layers, Earth Engine data export, and automated QGIS-to-Blender style 3D terrain rendering.

TerrainRenderer automates the workflow from the "3D georeferenced map" QGIS+Blender tutorials: given a height-map PNG (elevation, black=low/white=high) and a color-map PNG (hypsometric tint, NDVI, satellite imagery, etc.), it calls a headless-Blender render service (Cycles, GPU) and returns a rendered orthographic terrain image.

Install

npm install geopixer

Usage

import { createTerrainRenderer } from "geopixer";

const renderer = createTerrainRenderer(); // Mac mini first, localhost fallback

const result = await renderer.render({
  heightPngUrl: "https://.../elevation.png",
  colorPngUrl: "https://.../color.png",
  samples: 150,
  resolution: 1024,
});

console.log(result.outputUrl, `${result.renderSeconds}s on ${result.target}`);

Render targets are tried in priority order and health-checked, so this degrades gracefully: a shared GPU box first, the caller's own machine if it's offline.

Render service

The companion render service (spatialbay/geopixer-render) wraps headless Blender: plane sized to the source image, Displace modifier (height map), Subdivision Surface, Principled BSDF base color (color map), raking sun light, orthographic top-down camera, Cycles GPU render.

Status

Early scaffold (0.1.x). Planned: GeoServer/Earth-Engine data-source clients, a unified CLI shared with @geomotion/gm, and docs/examples microsite mirroring GeoMotion's /gm pattern.