Ugly River Terminus

ATT_Turan

Hi, all. I've actually owned all the ProFantasy mapping stuff since the CC2 days, but this is the first time I've had time to really start getting into it.

Anyhow, I've updated to CC3+ and I'm making my world map in the Hermin Wielink style. I got some good tips in this thread about improving the look of rivers and getting them to go to lakes: http://forum.profantasy.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=4065

My problem is where the rivers connect to the surrounding sea. When I zoom in, the blocky, glowing end of the river is very evident within the sea. What do I do to make this look better? Do I have to just draw an appropriate color (with a fill?) over the tip of the river to block the glow there?

Loopysue

Hi

Haven't mapped with HW for quite some time, but I used to solve it by making the land the background in a newly set up file, and drawing the sea and rivers on a sheet immediately above that - all on one sheet, so there's no actual boundary between the end of a river and the ocean.

However, I do remember very faintly the days before I decided to change my method that way, that I used to add a Colour Key effect to the land and draw all the rivers on the land sheet in the colour of the colour key. The colour key in that case needs to go right at the top of the effects list on the land sheet. Doing it that way effectively cuts through the land to reveal the ocean beneath it.

EDIT: If you have an existing map its probably best to use the second option and change the properties of the rivers you have already drawn so that they are the colour of the colour key, and then move them to the land sheet to slice through the land to reveal the ocean.

Loopysue

Or...

If you have a nice handy bridge near the mouth of the river, put the join between the river and the ocean right there, even if it means editing the land just a bit to draw the sea into the harbour/estuary area below the bridge.

suntzu

i actually cut my rivers out of the landmass

ATT_Turan

Thanks for the suggestions so far. If I don't get anything that's more of an actual solution, I'll riff off of Sue's third idea and put some of the waves symbols over the end of the river.

Wyvern

You can also try creating a polygon of appropriate shape, size and colouring/fill texture to hide the end of the river line where it meets the sea. You may need to set these patches up on a separate sheet of their own so you can tweak the effects to get them to blend in better.

Sue's solution of adding the sea and rivers to the same sheet higher than the land sheet in the CC3+ stack is overall a more elegant one. It can sometimes only shift the problem upstream though, to where you need to start using much thinner river lines for the sections closer to the headwaters.

jslayton

To combine techniques, try using CONTOURSMX ( http://rpgmaps.profantasy.com/?p=4292 ) to cut the rivers out of your background polygon.