Rivers Tutorial

ArgoForg

A couple people had mentioned they really liked the way the rivers on my overland country-scale maps looked, so I thought I'd take a little time out to create a quick (or not so quick, as the case might be) tutorial of the sort of technique I use to create them. If nothing else, maybe it will give people a few ideas, and if so, that's never a bad thing. Enjoy!

Shessar

OK. This is absolutely wonderful ArgoForg.

Thank you soooo much!

CharlesWayneRobinson

Nice tutorial!

Tonnichiwa

Very nice tutorial. Thank you

Ralf

Great work and thanks for the tutorial. Would you mind if I added it to the recent "user tutorials" blog post?

ArgoForg

Thanks everyone! And no problems with that at all, Ralf! Thanks!

Barliman

Sweet! Thank you for doing this!

Gathar

First, I'd like to tell you that in addition to being interesting, I appreciated very much the fact that you tutorial is FUN to read !
I just have one point I'm not sure to understand. You say: "First, because we’re going to want to connect the next section as close to the midpoint of the previous section as we can."
Does that mean that each segment overlaps the previous one on half of its length?

Lorelei

Thank you so much for this!!! I cannot wait to try this technique out

ArgoForg

Posted By: GatharFirst, I'd like to tell you that in addition to being interesting, I appreciated very much the fact that you tutorial is FUN to read !
I just have one point I'm not sure to understand. You say: "First, because we’re going to want to connect the next section as close to the midpoint of the previous section as we can."
Does that mean that each segment overlaps the previous one on half of its length?

Thank you very much! I was hopeful that it would be enjoyable to read as well as informative!

And yeah, I can definitely understand where that might cause a question, but no, I meant midpoint by width, as opposed to by length. Basically, trying to get it as close to your previous segment's endpoint (the line you use for construction, I mean, or to select if you need to select a river segment), which should lay in the middle, width-wise, of your segment.

The basic idea is that you will be making each segment smaller (or larger) than the one before by changing its line width, so connecting it closest to the midpoint (width-wise) of the previous segment will make that change the least conspicuous... especially since CC3's line width will calculate from the center width of the line.

Looking over what I just wrote, that might sound confusing. Tell me if it doesn't make any sense and I can see if I can throw up a quick visual if need be!

Gathar

Thank you, it makes much more sense now!

OldGuy

Wonderful tutorial! I've always drawn two lines close together, varying their distance slightly as I went, in order to create rivers with varying width. But your technique seems much simpler. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

One thing I like to do, which will work with your method as well, is to put sections of a river on different layers. That way, I can turn on/off sections based on zoom level. When I'm zoomed in I may want to see every single stream and tributary. But when I'm zoomed out I may only want to see the main body (leaving out the tiny bits in order to keep the map view from being overrun with rivers).

As others have said, your tutorial is well written and fun to read. Kudos and thanks for the great technique!