The past Year I have been teaching myself Houdini, which I thought would be the ultimate "do it all" tool for maps. 🙂
With the toolkit I've made I can
create roads which will adapt to and adjust the heightmap (including AI and traffic splines)
create railway tracks which will adapt to and adjust the heightmap, and create the required spline for the train system
create road barriers
create cascading rivers with flowmaps
create field dimensions which at the same time will smooth the rough terrain beneath, and export helper objects to create all the field dimensions in one click in GE
texture the map using different selectors such as slope and height, road and railroad mask
scatter rocks and cliffs based on different rules
scatter trees based on different rules
I Have more ideas for tools in the future!
Below is a sample of most of the tools combined and how one tool can dictate where the next is allowed to work. For instance a road will create a mask, which tells the tree scatter tool that it cannot spawn trees there.