Texture splatting with Three.js

Challenge accepted!

First, you can write a vertex shader that takes a grayscale image and uses it as a heightmap, and includes a varying float (called vAmount below) to pass to the fragment shader to determine the texture(s) to display(blend) at that point.

uniform sampler2D bumpTexture;
uniform float bumpScale;

varying float vAmount;
varying vec2 vUV;

void main() 
{
    vUV = uv;
    vec4 bumpData = texture2D( bumpTexture, uv );

    vAmount = bumpData.r; // assuming map is grayscale it doesn't matter if you use r, g, or b.

    // move the position along the normal
    vec3 newPosition = position + normal * bumpScale * vAmount;

    gl_Position = projectionMatrix * modelViewMatrix * vec4( newPosition, 1.0 );
}

Next comes the fragment shader, which can include however many textures you need for different elevations, and there is a great built-in function called smoothstep that makes smooth transitions much easier to calculate.

An example of code for such a fragment shader:

uniform sampler2D oceanTexture;
uniform sampler2D sandyTexture;
uniform sampler2D grassTexture;
uniform sampler2D rockyTexture;
uniform sampler2D snowyTexture;

varying vec2 vUV;

varying float vAmount;

void main() 
{
    vec4 water = (smoothstep(0.01, 0.25, vAmount) - smoothstep(0.24, 0.26, vAmount)) * texture2D( oceanTexture, vUV * 10.0 );
    vec4 sandy = (smoothstep(0.24, 0.27, vAmount) - smoothstep(0.28, 0.31, vAmount)) * texture2D( sandyTexture, vUV * 10.0 );
    vec4 grass = (smoothstep(0.28, 0.32, vAmount) - smoothstep(0.35, 0.40, vAmount)) * texture2D( grassTexture, vUV * 20.0 );
    vec4 rocky = (smoothstep(0.30, 0.50, vAmount) - smoothstep(0.40, 0.70, vAmount)) * texture2D( rockyTexture, vUV * 20.0 );
    vec4 snowy = (smoothstep(0.50, 0.65, vAmount))                                   * texture2D( snowyTexture, vUV * 10.0 );
    gl_FragColor = vec4(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0) + water + sandy + grass + rocky + snowy;
}  

Then you can use a THREE.ShaderMaterial to use this for a given mesh. The above code is implemented at http://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/Shader-Heightmap-Textures.html and produces a result like this:

Hope this helps you get started. Happy coding!