Creating braided river and very low topography

[ScottH]

Hi,

I'm very much a noob to Terragen. I love the way you can make great complex terrains, however, I'm having trouble in making less complex terrains but large meandering/braided rivers. Bascially I am trying to make a very low topography with very flat terrain and large braided river systems flowing across the surface. Similar to what we call "Channel Country" in Australia. Has anyone created this sort of landscape in Terragen and if so could you please give me some tips on what you did. I hope someone can help or point me to some tutorials that might be buried somewhere online.

Thanks,

Scott

[Dune]

I think you better make your river masks in something like World Machine, as there's no way of making a river system in TG. I've tried, never succeeded.

[lat 64]

Three years ago now when I was pretty much a noob(still am really) I did this cartoony representation of an Alaska floodplain.

I made a grayscale tiff to import as the heightfield and used a very small range of gray to keep it flat.
I'm sure I could do much better now, but it worked for the job then and was a great learning experience.
Here's the results(attached). No salties, just Salmon

I attached a jpeg that is a section of the tif I used. Just convert it to tif (p-shop?) and use it for starters.

Post again if you need some pointers how to proceed.

Cheers and welcome,
Russ

[Dune]

That is indeed another method and something I often do, making a tif map (no jpg) in PS. Only I wouldn't have used such a small range of greys, but the whole range to black for more control over the edges. In TG you can adjust the level of the riverbeds.
Nice map, by the way.

[lat 64]

Yes, you must convert the map back to a tif. I posted that as a jpeg so I wouldn't drag half the free world down with a big file.

I see now that Ulco(Dune) is correct, you could use a wider range in grays and use the heightfield multiplier at the displacement tab in the hieghtfield shader to squash it flatter. I need to work more with that. Like I said this was one of my first jobs. I was pretty confused when I did this image and my first renders were hilarious.

The map is an actual place in Alaska. I just used an ariel photo, and "bleached" it out in Photoshop until just the water features remained. Then I used it as a Dem tif(digital elevation model tif)

The water surface is made with two or more "lakes" just below the elevation of the top of the river banks. Crude, but effective.

Let us know if you get lost,

Russ