In version 5.610, 7 new map layers where added which are exclusive to Floating licenses.


If you do not have a floating license, these layers are not available to you. You will not see them.


New Layers

  • Global Tree Cover Mask 2017
  • Global Surface Water 2021
  • Sentinel 2 Cloudless by EOX.
  • Bake Colors  + Normals.


MapBox Layers require your own key.

Esri layers require your your own  key.

OS UK layers require your own key.


The French map layers are from : https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte

These layers are for france only.


Ortho 1950 to 1965



There is also a Global water map available.

This water map is from here : https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/map

1 pixel is ~30m.


There is also a Global World water Vector layer available separately.

Ask support if you need this data set. its large, covers the entire globe. This is a very high quality custom made vector data set for global ocean waters.


Global Tree Cover 2017 (with version 5.615 or greater)


Baking Imagery.....

Only with a floating license....


This works from the map loader. Just as if you where going to download map tiles, it bakes.


  • Image and Normals Baking. Bake all visible image tags to a single tag. This is Ideal for export or use with engines that can not deal with flat projected mapping or multiple images.
  • Normals. Baking object space normals at high resolution lets you reduce your mesh size.  
  • A standard Material is set up and new the new image is added to the color channel. The normals image is added to normal channel and set to object space. all tags that could be deleted are selected. you don't really need them once baked. The point of baking is to reduce multiple tags to one, and of course get a useful normals map.
  • If you export your model with baked material tags and normals it can easily be brought into any other app. Best is to save your scene with assets before exporting, and to remove any unused materials from your scene.
  • Normals are in object space. For Redshift, you would use a bump node and set it to object normals space.
  • The resolution of the baked map is defined by the level you select. higher levels are higher res. Best is to also increase the subs of your DEM Earth object to give your normal map the best definition.
  • There is a new setting in prefs, under textures, for "Bake Bit Depth". Options are 8,16,32. for normals 16 bits is better. the default is 8. 
  • When you start a Bake session, it creates a material, and begins the bake process in the background. Once the bake is completed, it will update the material and show your baked image and normals. At that point, you could delete the other material tags and/or unwanted geo ref tags on your object.
  • Image and normals are done in one pass, so it can take a while to bake, depending on resolution.
  • Elevator Music will play during a bake session, as I found that fun :)  it will randomly pick and play one of any mp3 files it finds in the plugin res folder.... If you hate this, you can delete the mp3's from your res folder. you can add mp3 files to the plugin res folder, or remove them all.  If enough people ask for an option to turn it off, I can do that. for now it is a fun thing to try for anything that takes some time to do. Let me know what you think.