Use an image as a heightmap, use another image as a biome map, edit map settings and even biomes in-game, overlay river and road layers, do raster analysis. Effectively this is a WorldPainter mod. You can use spatial files for elevation and landcover or you can paint your own using any paint program. You can also persist structures using in-game tools.
use a grayscale image as a heightmap:
use in-game settings tool (r,g,b color band overlay shown in background)
configure biome interpretation in-game:
results:
perform on-the-fly raster analysis such as slope and aspect:
overlay an image onto the map (here a grayscale version of the same image is used as the heightmap) in 216 colors:
dependencies: requires mod security disabled, for more specific and advanced features an image library will be required, see below...
download latest zip:
https://github.com/bobombolo/realterrain/archive/master.zipgithub:
https://github.com/bobombolo/realterrainyoutube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66pehrH6Bh0license: original content is WTFPL
includes several lua libraries including: magick, imagesize, imlib2, graphicsmagick, lua-socket, lunatic-python (not all are used). ImageMagick is the most tested library for this mod, and until recently was a requirement. GraphicksMagick is recommended for speed and automatic bit-depth detection and handling of strange GIS rasters.
thanks to paramat for the skeletal mapgen mod code:
https://gist.github.com/paramat/389ee65ce9378d9dad25