I finally found a proper solution to this long-standing problem (currently in Matplotlib 3), which does not require multiple calls to contour or rasterizing the figure. Note that the problem illustrated in the question appears only in saved publication-quality figures formats like PDF, not in lower-quality raster files like PNG. My solution was inspired by … Read more
Perlin noise is completely controlled by the different variables you set, i.e. amplitude, frequency and persistance. The amount of octaves has a little change, but not much. In code that I have written in the past I have just played around with the order of magnitude of the frequency and persistance until I have gotten … Read more
You could take a cue from nature and modify your second idea. Once you generate your continents (which are all about the same size), get them to randomly move and rotate and collide and deform each other and drift apart from each other. (Note: this may not be the easiest thing ever to implement.) Edit: … Read more