It's been a while since I posted, life has been busy. Here's an encounter map that the adventurers are currently struggling along a muddy trail, trying to reach the summit of a rock outcropping while orcs rain missiles down upon their heads. Still not satisfied I'm portraying the height difference well enough.

I still need to work on exporting maps as jpeg but this one looks ok in the VTT environment. Using Blend and Edge Fade Inner with reduced transparency for the ligher grass areas on a seprate sheer. They pop a lot more in the jpeg than on the screen. Almost looks like an aerial view of a golf course, not what I was trying for🙄. Will experiement with transparency further.

Any guidance is appreciated

A small encounter location. 2022 Forest Trails annual with the new Hedge row symbols.

I needed a city location for my players to meet a gnome who belongs to an organization that "acquires" unique and valuable "stuff". Might add a small kitchen in the lower left corner later but for now it's just a place to meet, drink and arrange contracts.

JulianDracos,

First, thank you. Most of the credit goes to the software and LoopySue for creating the styles.

The river is on three sheets (see below), all of which are in the Forest Trails style. 1 - riverbed 2 - water 3 - deep water. The white lines are an additional water contours sheet. Shessar has a great tutorial on contours (Writtent tutorials/shessar's battlemats/contours) that can be applied to white lines over water to make "foam" that suggests turbulence.

The rest is just sheet effects. Draw "river" Most common sheet effect is edge fade inner with reduced inner opacity to 60-80%. It's personal preference. Copy river to Riverbed sheet (Copy to sheet - right click copy button) and change the Fill to Terrain, default Riverbed. (Change Properties - right click & select change fill style). Change sheet to Deep Water and add the darker water. Typical Sheet effects are Edge Fade Inner with the inner opacity adjusted until I like the look (40% seems to work well). I usually add Blur as well to make the dark water more difuse.

Add sheet Dark Water Contours. Set Default colour to white, line width to 0.2 or 0.3, and use the Smooth Path tool (RHS tool bar) to draw the lines. Per Shessar's tutorial, add Blur effect to sheet and play with the Blur Radius until you like you like what you see.

Adding in some of the suggestions from EukalyptusNow and you get...