Shallow waters for an Inner Sea?
My map has a large, contained inner sea that I would like to add a shallow water effect around the edges. This was easy to do with my coasts but I cant get anything to work for inner seas/lakes.
I tried doing the reverse of the coastal method by making the lake have the shallow water color and drawing the outline for the deep parts using the deep coast outline but it just disappears behind everything no matter what layer/sheet I put it on.
I'm using the Mike Shley style.
Comments
If the sea is very large then it might be easier to cut a hole in the land and use the actual sea background rather than a lake fill.
Before I go any further with that, please can you upload the FCW so we can see if there are any possible issues with doing it that way?
Thanks, here's the FCW. The sea in question is the big central one with the shallow water fill.
Thanks.
Ok, this is really quite easy to set up because you've only just started the map and there's nothing else on it but sea, land and this massive lake.
The first thing I did was hide the COASTLINE sheet.
Then I used the change properties tool to move the lake polygon to the LAND sheet, and convert it to a solid fill of the colour 6, which is magenta. I also added a Color Key sheet effect to the LAND sheet, using the same default colour number 6 as the knock out color.
Then I reshowed the COASTLINE sheet and hit apply.
If this is what you want (above), here is the modified FCW.
You have to turn the effects on for the cutout to work, so here is a slightly better version with the effects turned on when loaded.
Thanks, this is almost there I think. I'm also trying to get a shallow water effect in the lake like in the screenshot below. I started with the shallow water filled lake, and drew a coastal poly for the deep part. The problem is, no matter what layer/sheet I select, as soon as I hit refresh, the dark water poly goes behind everything and you dont see it.
Oh I see. I'm guessing that you are using the sea contour drawing tool.
That draws on the CONTOURS (SEA) sheet, which is underneath the land as the map is drawn.
On my map version of your map it shows because I've cut a hole in the land.
If you want that contour sheet to be on top of the lake in the original version of the map, move the CONTOURS (SEA) sheet down the list until it is just below the RIVERS sheet in that list. This will put it on top of the lake surface and make it visible.
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Whichever way you do it, you will also have to greatly reduce the size of the Edge Width on the Edge Fade, Inner sheet effect on that sheet to prevent it edge fading the contour out of existence. I think it was set to about 7.5? Mine is shown above at just 0.5
Ok, that worked! Thanks again!
You're welcome :)