Author here--This is a follow-up to my last post, here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17065264" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17065264</a><p>The feedback in that thread was great, and I ended up implementing several of the suggestions given in the comments. Thanks for all the help!
Without wanting to be deliberately picky, I'm not sure I see anything here that could not be done with a few clicks/commands in a dedicated remote sensing/raster analysis package, with GDAL and GRASS being a couple of obvious free options that spring to mind.<p>The maps in the Vatican museum are indeed very cool, in fact the Vatican in general blew me away, and I've seen a fair number of impressive historical sites in Europe/Near East.
Why not throw it into Blender and get an actual pathtraced result. Here's a quick render I made:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/GBTjJUm.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/GBTjJUm.jpg</a><p>Notice the correct soft self reflections on the sides of the hills in the shade.