How To Create Rivers in CC3 with Varying Widths?
silversurfer1221
Newcomer
Hello. New here.
Is there a way to create a river, using CC3's river tools, that begins wide and ends narrow? I only see a way to set a single width for the river, not set a beginning and ending width. Any help with this would be much appreciated.
I've only seen a tutorial that said you had to draw a segment of a river at one width, change the width and draw the next segment, and keep repeating this until the river is finished. But the end result looked a bit like steps (each segment of the river ended at the same width it had begun with and the next segment would start at the new width). So, if there is any way to create a smooth change in the river from a small to wide or wide to small, I would love to know how to do it.
Thanks in advance.
Comments
It's basically two ways to do that. The first way is to do as you mention yourself, chop it into sections and gradually change the line width. The trick is to make the change between segments small enough to not be noticeable (keep the intended zoom level of the map in mind, you'll obviously always see the "steps" when you zoom close enough, for example when you make it, but if the map is made for being zoomed out, ensure it looks great at that scale.). Adding effects to the river like glow or edge fade will also hide the stepping. I usually also place the steppings where the river joins with another river, which also hides the edges.
The second way is to draw the river using a polygon tool instead of a line. This obviously means you end up drawing both banks of the river, but youæll have full control of the appearance. This is a bit more work than using a line, and also more work if you need to move some nodes since you have both sides of the river to work width, but you can make it exactly as you want to.
Thank you for your reply. I do appreciate it. Having said that, I think it's a shame that CC3 does not allow you to draw rivers with varying width. Other mapping tools allow this, making it fast and easy to create complex river systems. But I like CC3 better because, overall, it's more powerful with more features. I'd love to see rivers in CC3 upgrade to have this feature for rivers.
I concur with silver's comments. There is a macro I use sometimes that does this.
MACRO Riv
SELSAVE
SAVESETTINGS
GV lw1 2
GV lw1 ^DEnter first width: (2)
GV lw2 0.2
GV lw2 ^DEnter last width: (0.2)
GN c1 78
GN c1 ^DEnter first color: (78 ligh blue)
GN c2 65
GN c2 ^DEnter last color: (65 dark blue)
GV bk 0
GP P0 ^DClick first point
IFERR MacroDone
GP PT P0
GOLAYER TOERASE
GN PointNb 1
:Clickloop
GP PL @0,0
GP PT ^DClick next point
IFERR PointsDone
LINE PL PT;
GL comm GP
APND comm
APND comm P
APND comm PointNb
APND comm
APND comm PT
APND comm
comm;
GN PointNb PointNb+1
GO Clickloop
:PointsDone
GOLAYER WATER/RIVERS
SHEET MYRIVERS
GN LineNb 1
GP PI P0
:LineLoop
GL comm GP
APND comm
APND comm PJ
APND comm P
APND comm LineNb
APND comm
comm;
GV lw lw1+(lw2-lw1)*(LineNb-1)/(PointNb)
LWIDTH lw
GN col c1+(c2-c1)*(LineNb-1)/(PointNb)
COLOR col
FPATH PI PJ;
GN LineNb LineNb+1
GP PI PJ
IFP PointNb-LineNb LineLoop
LAYER TOERASE
HIDEA
SELBYA
ERA
SHOWA
LAYER WATER/RIVERS
:MacroDone
GETSETTINGS
SELREST
ENDM
Make sure the style is set to solid, and you start at the widest end first. Just use Change Properties if you want them all 1 colour, and Straight to Smooth tool if you want them smoothed.
The result is on a Sheet called MYRIVER - you will need to move it to where you want it in the sheet order, and/or change the sheet to RIVERS
You can Group them all at the end if you like, but if you need to edit, just Ungroup them (under Tools>Group/Ungroup)
You can also draw polygons of the same colour and on the same Sheet as the river lines to further hide the "steps" between different river widths, if that's too much of a problem at the scale you're mapping, in Monsen's first solution.