Cesium Quantized Mesh (.terrain)
Open BetaQuantized Mesh is Cesium's binary terrain format for streaming 3D relief into a browser: a triangle mesh with vertices quantized to 16 bits and edge indices for seamless tile stitching. On osm2cdr the export works like this: we return one valid .terrain tile for the chosen area — a regular 65x65 grid (4225 vertices, 8192 triangles). Elevations are read from the global Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (about 30 m per sample); where there is no coverage (ocean, polar latitudes) the tile honestly becomes flat at sea level. This is a single level of detail tile for a quick prototype, not a multi-level (multi-LoD) pyramid. Opens in CesiumJS, Cesium for Unreal/Unity.
Key Features
About Quantized Mesh Format
Quantized Mesh is a binary terrain tile format invented for CesiumJS: a triangle mesh whose vertex coordinates are compressed to 16 bits within the tile, plus lists of edge vertices for seamless stitching with neighbours. The quantized-mesh-1.0 specification is open, but in practice the format lives inside the Cesium ecosystem.
The export exists to get the terrain of your area quickly for a 3D scene: look at the shape of the landscape, put terrain under a model in Cesium for Unreal or Unity, test an idea before rolling out a full tiling pipeline.
What you get: one .terrain tile for the chosen area — a regular grid of 65x65 samples, that is 4225 vertices and 8192 triangles, with an 88-byte header and edge indices per the specification. Elevations are taken from the global Copernicus DEM terrain model (GLO-30, about 30 meters per sample); where there is no coverage — ocean, polar latitudes — the cells are honestly filled with sea level and the tile becomes flat.
This is a tile of a single level of detail, not a worldwide tile pyramid. If you need working multi-level terrain over a large territory, build it in Cesium ion or cesium-terrain-builder on your own elevation source.
What Program Opens Quantized Mesh Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with Cesium Quantized Mesh (.terrain) (.terrain) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 3D coordinates supported
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- No attributes
- Output: 1 file
- One well-formed Quantized Mesh .terrain tile built on a 65x65 sample grid (4225 vertices, 8192 triangles) with heights from Copernicus DEM GLO-30/90; flat sea-level tile where coverage is absent.
Who Uses Quantized Mesh Maps
How to Export Quantized Mesh
How to Open After Export
- CesiumJS — attach the tile as your own terrain provider or load it into Sandcastle: the fastest way to see the result in a browser.
- Cesium for Unreal and Cesium for Unity — here Quantized Mesh is the native terrain source; the tile is placed into the scene as the base under buildings and objects.
- Cesium ion — if you need full multi-level terrain over a large territory: upload your own elevation source and the service will build the tile pyramid itself.
- cesium-terrain-builder — the same result on your own, on your own server, from a GeoTIFF with elevations.
- Checking the file — the tile is binary, opening it in a text editor is pointless: go by the file size and by how it landed in the scene.
Popular maps in Quantized Mesh
Get Cesium Quantized Mesh (.terrain) map exports
Download professional Quantized Mesh maps from OpenStreetMap. Instant generation, any area.