March Entry:Grinding the river handle

[jfrazierjr]

New challenge huh ? Well its a bit technical this one. Also the process to put rivers in is a methodical one hence my title. Its about climate and topology, a little geology and basically doing the water runs downhill thing.

Heres my previous tut on the subject. Which was based on a lot of others peoples comments as well.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3822

Obviously ill be using my GTS to chug out the rivers so ill need the topology. Then since the challenge does not call for just rivers but a sh*t load of rivers, I had better turn on the taps and let the rain flood out. No need for me to fix up all those pesky little pools it tends to generate this time then.

So for my first WIP, I had better actually get that image knocked into shape. After a clean up job, and an edge detect then it comes out nice and large like this. I'll print this, get out my pen, draw some contours on it and scan it back in again. I find that quicker than any computer process including a tablet.

### Latest WIP ###

Don't forget, the sample rivers provided can't be changed more then a tiny amount, so not sure how your application will handle existing river beds.

[Redrobes]

It should be alright. I will tell it where they are and try to get the terrain around them right. If I get that wrong then it will move them.

Well, here is my effort with a pen and a scanner. This has been touched up from the original scan. Ill have to fill this in with height bands and get a 3D map.

### Latest WIP ###

[Redrobes]

Just dropped graduating colors into the spaces between contours and then blurred it a bit to get height map.

### Latest WIP ###