Yep, I've seen those, and I've been tempted to throw together an example with rayshader to show how easy it is to do with just a few lines of code.

One of the main motivations behind developing rayshader was to democratize mapping--forcing people to become proficient in not one but two highly specialized software suites (any GIS software + blender) really made beautiful mapping unattainable for most. Plus, I just dislike GUIs in general, and wanted a code-based solution for map making :)