6 replies to this topic

[jt83]

The course I'm working on has a twisting creek that winds through most of the holes.  I've been digging it out so that the depth is consistently 1m or so under the banks.  Ideally I'd like to drop one water plane on the whole thing but when I raise it I get flooding on parts of the map.

 

Do you guys just keep digging until the trench is the same depth everywhere, fill it up, and smooth out the subsequent steep banks in the really deep areas?

[NoPutt]

You can tilt and scale the waterplane if needed, there is no

problem using multiple waterplanes either.

[slammin]

NoPutt offered a valuable piece of advice regarding multiple water planes. I had to drag in 3 water planes onto a lidar course in order to fill up a 12 acre lake. I had tried to stretch and twist a single water plane to fit the lake, but was never successful.

[jspirate]

I usually drop the water plane in just above the creek and then resize so that it is no bigger than necessary.  Once sized appropriately, I lower it in to the desired level. To size it you click on the plane you want and then select the tool that is highlighted by the yellow photoshop arrow.  In the pic below you can see that I have the water plane to the left selected.  There is another plane to the right that is at a higher elevation.  To resize the selected plane I grabbed the red box (green photoshop arrow) and dragged it in towards the white box until the water plan was long and narrow.  This step almost always includes entering some degree of rotation in the Y axis in the inspector.   That way the long side runs along the long length of the creek.

 

In the second screen shot below you can see one way to deal with elevation changes.  You can make mini dams where the water drops to the next level down.  I prefer this to having a water plane at a downward angle.  The downward angle approach never looks very natural to me.  I believe noputt shared his water fall package here on the forum.  You can use that to make some animated water flow over the mini dams.

 

 

[axe360]

One other thing. Sometimes it's a real bitch to get it just right so when you have an area that the water shows where you don't want it to, you can raise the terrain slightly and no one will ever know.

[DoGgs]

Hiding uglies is key to good design rocks n' reeds are your friend

[jt83]

Thanks guys.  Multiple planes and maybe a few rocks looks to be the way.