Basemap

Overview

The basemap actor renders a background map into the scene and provides geographic context lines (graticule, coastlines, country borders) as integrated sub-components.

Key features:

By default, the actor uses a Natural Earth raster basemap, which is automatically downloaded with the Met.3D binaries and installation.
Alternatively, any geo-referenced GeoTIFF file can be loaded as a custom basemap.
The visible region (bounding box) can be customized to display only a subset of a larger map file.
Graticule, coastlines, and country borders can be toggled independently and their colour and thickness adjusted.
Custom shapefiles can be loaded for alternative or higher-resolution coastline and border data.

Loading a Custom Basemap

To load a custom map image:

Open the Base map → Configuration panel.
In the Map file (GeoTIFF) tab, click on ... to open a file browser.
Select any geo-referenced GeoTIFF file from your system.

Graticule

The graticule is configured directly within the basemap actor under Base map → Configuration → Graticule.

Toggle visibility with the enabled checkbox.
Adjust line colour and thickness.
Define the longitude range and spacing in the Longitudes field using the format [western boundary, eastern boundary, spacing], e.g. [-180, 180, 10].
Define the latitude range and spacing in the Latitudes field analogously, e.g. [-90, 90, 10].
Adjust label positions and font size in the Labels sub-section.
Click Execute (Compute graticule) to apply the updated spacing or label settings.

Coastlines and Country Borders

Coastlines and country border lines are also part of the basemap actor, available under Base map → Configuration → Coastlines and Country borders.

For each:

Toggle visibility with the enabled checkbox.
Adjust line colour and thickness.
Optionally load a custom shapefile via the file selector to replace the built-in Natural Earth data, for example to use higher-resolution or region-specific boundaries.