Simulating Terrain Features
I was curious if anyone had some suggestions on how I might represent certain terrain features and topography.
In particular, a part of one region I'm mapping has a couple draws leading into the interior (both centered on river deltas emptying into the sea, with heights or steep slopes on either side). I'm not sure that I can make it look right with the Contour feature, and thought I might do it with one of the terrain fills (I was able to very nicely simulate chalk cliffs along one of my coastlines using the HW Rocky Waste 1 fill).
Anyone have any suggestions? for how I might do this? I'm using the HW style.
In particular, a part of one region I'm mapping has a couple draws leading into the interior (both centered on river deltas emptying into the sea, with heights or steep slopes on either side). I'm not sure that I can make it look right with the Contour feature, and thought I might do it with one of the terrain fills (I was able to very nicely simulate chalk cliffs along one of my coastlines using the HW Rocky Waste 1 fill).
Anyone have any suggestions? for how I might do this? I'm using the HW style.
Comments
I don't understand what you mean by 'draws'. Do you mean valleys?
If so, I would make the outlines of the deltas part of the land shape, add mountain symbols around the valley to make there be a valley, then draw the rivers in
Thanks Pete
In that case the solution I suggested probably isn't appropriate, since I was thinking much bigger than a draw.
(I'm just asking because there's a relatively easy way to do the relief if the map is top view, but I can't think of a solution for ISO view)
Draw may not exactly be the right term; they're usually dry, narrow, and steep, so it's unlikely to house a river and delta. A chine may be too narrow for the feature I have in mind, so it may simply be a steep river valley.
I used the Brown Hills to define the walls of the river valley as it climbs up from the bay in the south, Green Hills to denote the steeper shoreline on either side, and then Rocky Waste 1 for the cliff face along the shoreline exposed to weathering from the ocean (whereas the bay is more sheltered).
I'm not particularly happy with that delta, though. That may need some more work....
First create a new sheet above anything else, and draw the full extent of the ridges you want to create in a mid tone grey solid polygon.
Then add the following three sheet effects to that sheet, and adjust the settings of each one till the grey is blended into whatever lies beneath it, the lighted bevel is giving the right steepness and depth of slope.
Had a blue screen moment and completely crashed - everything. Will try to upload the images in a minute when it stops doing the dead slow trick on me!
EDIT:
Now that I've managed to get my machine back to some kind of normal - that's a great start on your map, though you might want to consider greatly reducing the scale of the water texture, since it is badly pixelated - those little squares.
In Texas a bayou can be something that a small canoe ( two people ) can barely get through, to a bayou a freighter can go up.
A gully can be from less than 10' wide, to one 200' wide.
So it just depends on what you want to represent.
An old storry, likely true.
There is a storm type in Texas called a 'fence lifter'.
A small hole under a fence a calf has used to get out doesn't look like much.
A heavy rain can turn that hole into a gully maybe 100' wide and 20' deep. And it looks like the fence was lifted way up oi the air. But it was the ground that fell away from the fence.