How it was made

1. Capture. Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles rendered with three.js through an orthographic camera, 30° below the horizon facing north, at 0.25 m per pixel. 1024 px tiles on a fixed grid.
2. Paint. Each tile redrawn as pixel art by Nano Banana 2 (Gemini image model) from one fixed style prompt, then checked against its render and re-aligned to the pixel.
3. Hem. Neighbouring tiles overlap by 64 px and are faded together, so seams don't show.
4. Serve. The stitched map is cut into a Leaflet tile pyramid. Search uses OpenStreetMap place names projected into the same camera.

Pipeline after Justin Chavez's guide to making isometric cities.

Credits

• Imagery source: Google Maps Photorealistic 3D Tiles
• Place names: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL
• Pixel art: Nano Banana 2 (Google Gemini)
• Map viewer: Leaflet
• 3D tiles rendering: 3DTilesRendererJS and three.js