The Silver City (a big city around a waterfall)

[vorropohaiah]

this one looks very interesting, looking forward to see where this goes

[feanaaro]

Tried some tinkering on the cliff and other minor things. Does it look better, or worse, this way?

[feanaaro]

Here I tried to address the critique about the river, by introducing semi-transparency. Does it work?

[Larb]

It looks much better. I'd be tempted to add a bit more white foam at the base of the waterfall perhaps.

[anomiecoalition]

I think this is great (particularly given how tricky waterfalls can be). Although I think one problem with it is where the water and cliff edge meet on the bottom right side. IMHO, the top left of your waterfall looks better because the two meet up pretty convincingly, but on the bottom right the cliff seems to extend out farther than the waterfall.

[feanaaro]

Anomiecoalition, that is actually the effect I was aiming for. The cliffs extend a little bit beyond the waterfall line on both sides (though the southern one more than the northern), they are also a little higher than the waterfall. I figured that both things would be caused by water erosion.

[Will Brawner]

This looks awesome! I can tell you're working hard on the waterfall contours. I'd agree that the base of the falls needs a bit more foam, but hey, great job! Can't wait to see the city.

[feanaaro]

For some reasons photoshop decided to transform my work into an Eldritch abomination. So I had to retrieve a back up and rework from there.
This could be the more or less final terrain before I start with the actual city.
As per the foam at the base, you have to keep in mind the scale of the map, as it is you have roughly 100m of thick foam and much more of the thinner swirls. This is already exaggerated as compared to how a real waterfall would behave.

[Ciorstaidh]

Wow feanaaro. This is starting to look fantastic! I love the swirls on the water at the top of the falls, it give the water movement. You've got rock/sediment along the riverbank at the top of the cliff, any reason you didn't add that type of effect to the bottom? I keep coming back to this thread to check your progress because I can't wait to see what you do next!

[feanaaro]

Thanks Ciorstaidh. The reason for the rocks being visible on top of the cliff and not at the bottom is that (I guess) rocks are exposed by erosion, whether by the river or by the wind-rain, thus they would appear at the edge of the cliff and where the river becomes faster, in the proximity of the fall. Elsewhere the sediments would not be removed quickly enough to expose the bedrock.
Meanwhile, I am trying to define the basic structure of the city before going on to the real chore of placing buildings.