Problems with rivers and outlets
kevbeck43
🖼️ 13 images Surveyor
When I am doing area maps I come into an issue when connecting rivers to a larger body of water. Especially if you have effects on your river to make it look better. The effects will invariably be seen at the point of outlet and it looks unnatural. I don't have my mapping computer in front of me right now but I'm betting a lot of people know what I am talking about. Is their an established way to fix this in the tome? I have been kind of covering it up with a small segment of water I put a blur on to mask the abnormality but it is a jury rig fix.
Could you go into the river tool and create an outline on the river itself and put that on a sheet? This would allow you to apply effects to that outline. Then you could use break to break a line in your river outline at the right spot. Would that work? When I get home I can add pictures or examples if that makes the question easier to understand.
Could you go into the river tool and create an outline on the river itself and put that on a sheet? This would allow you to apply effects to that outline. Then you could use break to break a line in your river outline at the right spot. Would that work? When I get home I can add pictures or examples if that makes the question easier to understand.
Comments
Sometimes I use a Rivers Back sheet with a copy of the river on it. I trim the river on the Back sheet short of the coastline and put outer glows on it.
Sometimes I put the river on the land sheet then use the Color Key effect on the Land sheet so that the ocean shows through.
Here's a simple map showing both. Turn effects on to see what they look like.
One main alternative, as Sue said, is to "invert" the sheet order, so the water lies "on top" of everything else. You may need to change the effect settings to still get the coastal effects to look right with this though. The advantage putting all the water above the land surfaces has is you can draw the rivers as part of the ocean polygon, instead of needing to use the river line drawing tools, so the transitions from ocean to estuary to tributary streams no longer look so artificial. It can be a lot of extra work though, especially as you get to narrower streams.
As Shessar mentioned though, it really depends on what kind and size of area you're mapping.