tilepack 0.2.0

Convert TMS tile folders to MBTiles/PMTiles and serve them as TMS/WMTS endpoints

tilepack

Pack raster tile folders (TMS or XYZ) into single-file archives (MBTiles / PMTiles) and serve them as TMS and WMTS endpoints over HTTP.

Why

Raster tile folders contain thousands of small PNG files in deeply nested z/x/y directories. This makes them slow to copy, hard to manage, and fragile to transfer. Tilepack solves this by packing tiles into a single archive file while still exposing standard TMS and WMTS HTTP endpoints that clients like QGIS and CesiumForUnreal can consume directly.

Install

Requires Python 3.11+.

pip install tilepack

For development:

git clone https://github.com/ashnair1/tilepack.git
cd tilepack
uv sync --group dev

Usage

Verify tiles

Scan a tile folder or archive and report zoom levels, tile counts, format, and bounds.

tilepack verify ./path/to/tiles      # TMS/XYZ folder
tilepack verify output.mbtiles       # MBTiles archive
tilepack verify output.pmtiles       # PMTiles archive

Convert to archive

The output format is inferred from the file extension. The input tile scheme (TMS or XYZ) is auto-detected, or can be specified explicitly.

# Auto-detect input scheme
tilepack convert ./path/to/tiles output.mbtiles
tilepack convert ./path/to/tiles output.pmtiles

# Specify input scheme explicitly
tilepack convert ./path/to/tiles output.mbtiles --scheme xyz

Serve as TMS + WMTS endpoint

Start a local HTTP server exposing both TMS and OGC WMTS 1.0.0 endpoints from an archive file.

tilepack serve output.mbtiles --port 8000
tilepack serve output.pmtiles --port 8000

TMS endpoints:

• http://localhost:8000/tilemapresource.xml
• http://localhost:8000/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

WMTS endpoints:

• http://localhost:8000/WMTSCapabilities.xml — GetCapabilities
• http://localhost:8000/wmts/{Layer}/{TileMatrixSet}/{z}/{row}/{col}.png — RESTful tiles
• http://localhost:8000/wmts?Service=WMTS&Request=GetTile&... — KVP tiles

To load in QGIS: Layer > Add WMS/WMTS Layer > New, set URL to http://localhost:8000/WMTSCapabilities.xml, then Connect and Add.

Validate correctness

Randomly sample tiles from the original folder, fetch them from the running server, and verify byte-exact matches.

# Start the server in one terminal, then in another:
tilepack selftest ./path/to/tiles --base-url http://127.0.0.1:8000 --samples 200

MBTiles vs PMTiles

	MBTiles	PMTiles
Format	SQLite database	Cloud-optimised archive (Hilbert-curve index)
File count	1	1
Needs a tile server	Yes	No (supports HTTP range requests)
Best for	Local / on-prem serving	Cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob, GCS)

Use MBTiles for local or on-prem serving (e.g. feeding CesiumForUnreal on the same machine or network). It's a SQLite file with fast tile lookups and no coordinate flipping at read time.

Use PMTiles if you plan to host tiles in cloud storage. PMTiles can be served directly from a bucket via HTTP range requests with no tile server needed. However, TMS clients like CesiumForUnreal cannot consume PMTiles directly — they still need a server translating to TMS endpoints.

Either format works identically when served through tilepack serve — clients see the same TMS and WMTS endpoints regardless of the backing archive.

License

MIT