Minecraft used to be fine and dandy in vanilla. When someone found a seed with floating mountains and huge cliff faces and forest overhangs everyone went crazy for it. But now we're in a new era where demand for realistic terrain for projects is growing rapidly. At first people were creating great looking mountains with MC Edit/ World Edit. Next, it was all about making full mountain ranges realistically with World Painter -- entire maps with caves and forests and lakes! But now its all about making everything as realistic and detailed as possible.
I have become very invested with this recently with my personal discovery of World Machine a few months ago. Unlike the onthers it is not built for minecraft but can be transfered to World Painter via a height map (image where height differentials are represented with black and white). World Machine is really meant for generating large realistic terrain for multiple uses and game developers and it can be relatively simple to create a map hundreds of kilometers across (though rendering it would take forever). I have been really excited with my map making processes because if used well this software can make terrain so realistic it could easily compare with most popular terrain projects on PMC if rendered well.
However, with my new lust for realism in terrain I have hit a roadblock. And this is it:

Real World terrain is not perfect: layers are pushed up moved around and blended together. In each [free] terrain generation program that I've tried, creating layers or terraces in cliff is fairly simple (especieally with World Machine). However I have yet to discover a way to generate a terrian where the layers are pitched at an angle like in the Red Rocks Amphitheter in Colorado (above). Though this example is grand, pitched layering occurs naturally globally and I believe that an ultra-realistic terrain map in minecraft would include something like this.
But I've NEVER seen it. I have no idea how I could create it let alone make it realistic. There is no way that I've seen to generate layers in cliff faces like this (sloped) with any software nor in World Painter where layers arent based off of slope but rather height.
Maybe someone could make something like this with MC Edit/ World Edit but I doubt they could make it look good.
Perhaps its Minecraft itself; terrain is based off of blocks and angles are hard to create realistically with a bunch of squares.
But if angled lines such as these with a width of one block arent possible why not this:

These are the Flatirons in Boulder, Colorado. They're literally made of one kind of rock. I have yet to see someone make any terrain remotely similar to this. I imagine this is a little easier to create but it would be nearly impossible to make this realistic. If you know a way to generate terrain like this I would be amazingly grateful if you told me because I have been searching for a long time and have not found any software that can generate rocks like these.
So, if you know how to do this (or have done it) -- I would love to see it!
Please Comment down below or shoot me a link to your projects if you think they match my searcg criteria.
Also, I've got a ton of projects on the way that will hopefully be complete by summer's end that are years in the making so if youd like to see 'em go ahead and Subscribe (though im obligated to warn you that my current projects on PMC aren't very large nor exciting but the stuff thats coming is WAY better).
Even if your terrain isnt what I specified but you think it looks great I would love to see it nonetheless.
Thanks for reading and until next time this has been my expedition for Realistic Terrain in Minecraft