OSMnx · Basemaps & API textures (La Paz)
Drape satellite, street and WMS imagery over the Avenida Naciones Unidas, La Paz terrain. Covers 5 · Basemap Texture of the Elevation panel and continues from Elevation, DEM & 3D terrain.
The basemap controls stay hidden until a terrain object exists, so finish Elevation, DEM & 3D terrain first. Blender needs internet access either way, since the imagery APIs stream tiles or a WMS image.
1. Why La Paz
The basemap is fetched for the terrain’s geographic bounding box and UV-mapped onto the mesh, so it follows the elevation surface instead of lying flat. On gentle terrain that is hard to see. On La Paz’s relief the imagery wraps over ridges and valleys, which makes it easy to confirm the texture is georeferenced and aligned with the streets.
2. Choose an imagery source
Source is grouped by provider, and each provider exposes several styles.
| Provider | Styles | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Esri | Satellite (Imagery), Streets, Topographic, Dark Gray Canvas, Light Gray Canvas, Ocean Base, Hillshade, Terrain Base | None |
| OpenStreetMap | OSM Standard, OpenTopoMap | None |
| CARTO | Voyager, Positron (Light), Dark Matter | None (fair-use) |
| Mapbox | Satellite, Satellite Streets, Streets, Outdoors, Light, Dark | Mapbox token |
| MapTiler | Satellite, Satellite Hybrid, Streets, Topographic, Outdoor, Basic, Winter, Ocean | MapTiler key |
| Stadia / Stamen | Alidade Smooth (Light), Alidade Smooth Dark, Outdoors, Stamen Toner (B/W), Stamen Terrain, Stamen Watercolor | Stadia key |
| Custom WMS | Any OGC WMS GetMap layer |
Depends on server |
Esri · Satellite (Imagery) is the best first pass: high resolution, no key. The minimal canvas styles (Positron, Dark Matter, Light/Dark Gray) work better as neutral backdrops for data overlays.
Keys go in add-on preferences. Select a key-bound source without its key and the panel names the provider in a hint and blocks the fetch.
3. Set zoom (tile sources)
Every provider except WMS needs a Zoom. Higher zoom means more detail and more tiles, so use the live tile-count estimate to balance the two before fetching. Very high zoom over the 2 km radius is capped to stop accidental large requests, and styles with a lower native maximum are clamped automatically.
4. Fetch and apply
Fetch & Apply downloads the tiles (or the single WMS image), stitches them into one georeferenced image, and drapes it over the terrain with per-vertex UV mapping. The active source and its attribution appear once it is applied.
Fetching is cancellable. Interrupt a long download and in-flight tile requests are dropped, so Blender’s UI does not freeze.
5. Use a WMS layer
For an institutional or national orthophoto service, set Source to WMS and fill in WMS URL and Layer. The add-on issues one GetMap request in EPSG:4326 for the terrain’s bounding box, so the returned image maps linearly onto the mesh.
6. Compare and swap textures
Clear removes the current basemap, then fetch a different source to compare them on the same relief. Downloaded tiles are cached, so re-fetching a source and zoom you have already used is fast.
Next steps
That completes the OSMnx tutorials. Move on to the City2Graph tab with Import urban data.