Defining Your Own Raster Basemap in ERDAS TITAN

Something I forgot to mention in yesterday's post is the ability to define your own raster basemap in TITAN. So what does this mean???

Most virtual worlds have pre-cooked imagery that they serve up as their "skin of the earth" basemap. But what if I want to define my own default imagery, just for my own personal use? Some applications allow loading imagery as layers, but one of the useful features of the TITAN Client is that you can use your own imagery as the default skin.

So how do you do this?

First, load your imagery in TITAN's Geospatial Instant Messenger. The screen capture below shows an ECW orthomosaic that I have loaded.
Next, right click on the layer and choose the "Copy WMS URL" option.

With the URL copied, navigate over to My Services, where you'll see a few difference service options. For the next step, double-click on the WMS service.
This opens up the "Select Services" interface.
Here you can paste in the URL of your image that you copied earlier. Accept it and you'll see the WMS show up in the list of services, displayed below.
Right click on the newly-added WMS service (displayed above) and choose "Set as Default Basemap". You should see it turn red, indicating it is the default basemap.

Finally, fire up the TITAN Viewer. You can see the results of the example I ran through below. Note that my only layers are a terrain layer (see yesterday's post) and a KML file. I don't have any image layers, as my orthophoto is being used as the skin for the virtual world. It's a nifty workflow and can be useful if you operate in the photogrammetric world and create/display/use your own orthos or if you purchase orthos and just want to use them locally as a basemap, without having to deal with layer management.