Heightmap to STL
Hacked together a little tool called hmstl. It converts a heightmap – a grayscale image in which brighter pixels are interpreted as higher elevations – to STL, a format suitable for 3D printing.
For example, here’s a small heightmap:
And here’s the output model:
Right now it’s a not-too-user-friendly command line program that generates exceedingly large output files. If not eclipsed by other project ideas, future improvements might include a nice web map interface to select an area of interest and download the corresponding STL.