Using satellite images to make a map

[Redrobes]

Hey Ghostman, welcome and glad you liked the script I expect it would work well for satellite image stuff.

I do something kinda similar to what your doing. I have this GTS program which does some 3D terrain magic and then spits out lots of files at the end. These are the height map for starters but also the vegetation, amount of water, whether its snow, volcanoes, steam, yada yada etc. Then I take all of these files and put them into a program I wrote called a texture compositor which is a programmable image tool which picks up on these sources and then applies textures in programmable amounts to the render until its all done.

So I have a directory with about 30 or so seamless textures of different land and sea types. All sorts of stuff. Sea, coral, cliff, rock, ferns, trees, sand - loads of it. Then pretty much every terrain I create gets pushed through this and it spits out completed textured terrain. Its a cool way to go about it.

Without using this app you can do the same thing manually using layers and masks which is what I expect that you have done. So cool going.

I'll be keeping an eye on this...

[Ghostman]

Hello Redrobes. Yes, I use my textures on layers with masks in GIMP. Your programs sound really useful. Anyway, I'm glad that you published the script, it's saved me from much work.

[PlanetDesigner]

Yes - I have already released the Alpha version of my TERRAFORMER package for Fractal Terrains Pro. It uses NASA images and sampled RGB from NASA images for mapping.

If you want realism then I suppose the best source for textures that your going to find are NASA images / real Earth images.