It's an interesting idea for sure. Texture generation in general is something Leveller could help more with, since it has a lot of data available (slope, etc.).
Some user input might be warranted -- e.g., the user draws an n-sided poly indicating that it can be filled with farms (or make a selmask as you said). Another thing along those lines was to automate access to an image server to just grab the satelite imagery corresponding to a georeffed area. Of course that wouldn't be appropriate for fictional terrain.
Since GDAL includes OGR for shape layers, one of the next things was to import shapefiles as actual shape layers, db info and all, and that would give enough data to know where roads, etc. where.
Ray Carl Lingard wrote:
Hey Ray, looks convincing- what would be real useful, is the ability to have those cells limit themselves to pre-defined areas- maybe masked or whatever. This would give you clusters of cells. The idea is that you could use this to create textures for farmlands. You would need a way of extracting the intersection of cells- they would be the texture for the fences and hedgerows- could be done with a slope selector. The tricky bit is having the fields convincingly follow and grow from the roads and rivers, rather than simply stamping the cell pattern onto the road/. rivers.CarlBeen tinkering with the Cells plug-in and a derived form will allow easily simulating dried up water areas:http://www.daylongraphics.com/products/leveller/gallery/desert/dried_lake.jpgRay
