How To Make A River

Tutorial provided by: Magnum1973

Go to terrain edit, select paint mode and begin diggin a trench for your river. Don't worry about the width or depth right now. We can fix it later.

Now lets put some texture that is going to be under the river. I chosethe same texture that I use in the "how to make a lake" tutorial. Go to terrain texturing and select the texture you want or create new one. Paint your river bottom.

You now have a dry river bed. Time to add the water. Click your water tools button. then click to open waterstreams tab.

Click on add new stream. Click on the the name that comes up and change it to whatever you want. ex. if you are adding multiple streams name this one river 1.

Open the waterstream layer manager and select your water stream. Under layer one click the ... to select the type of water you want. When the box pops up for your choice make sure the file type is changed to .stx . Change the x and y to 50 and leave the angle as it is. Click on apply to apply the changes.

Now right click at the beginning of your river bed. You will now see now start seeing the water. Stretch it as far as you like along the stream bed. Right click again and you will see a new part of the river.(this is called a patch). Continue doing this until you have your river along the whole river bed. You will have to keep switching between navigation and editon mode. This takes some time to get used to. Don't get discouraged. What I usually do is try to make one patch for a straight part of the river and then add a new patch when I go around a turn.

Now lets fix the height. Make sure the river you are working on is selected if you have multiple rivers. Click on the water stream patches. Before going any further you might want to save. Then if you make a mistake on this process you can just reopen the map to your last save point. Saving often could be the best thing for you.

Now go to water stream patches.

Now select the button labeled "height"under the water stream patches. Go to where you started your river. You will see in green text "river 0" This is your first patch. Click on the height button to activate it. Now by clicking right click or left click on the mouse you can adjust the height of patch 0.

Switch to the next patch by clicking the arrow next to where it shows the patch. Now do the same for the rest of the patches until you have you river at the heights that you want it. Notice how each time you select a different patch it is highlighted in green

Now lets do the same for the width. Click the width button this time and change the patch the same way you did the height.

Ok you should now have something that resembles a river.

To add different detail to the river you can change the speed of each patch and also the opacity.

I changed the speed and opacity of patch 2. notice the difference. Adjust the settings to whatever you like.

To finish the river it will need reflection. Simple waters have an automatic reflection. Waterstreams you must add a reflection texture. Go to the waterstreams layer manager and select use reflection. when you add the sun to your map the river will now have reflection.

Don't panic after you see the reflection. It will look different in the game compared to what it looks like in the editor.