How do I make water look like it's lower than the ground in CC3?

[NeonKnight]

As promised here is a quick example of making the ground appear to be higher than the water.

In the first the ground looks higher than the water. In the second you can see I placed the WATER SHEET higher in the list (thus drawn before the FLOOR sheet). On the Floor sheet I applied a WALL SHADOW DIRECTIONAL effect. You could use a simple WALL SHADOW effect, but that is hard coded to always be from the Upper Left. I prefer the direction so I can change it, or if you prefer the WALL SHADOW DIRECTIONAL GLOBAL SUN (all shadows for any sheet with this effect come from a predefined Light Source you decide).

So, for this I chose a Light source as being 135 degrees (coincidentally the same angle as the default WALL SHADOW). Just remember that an angle of 0 means the Sun if Directly EAST, 90 degrees is directly NORTH, 180 is directly WEST and 270 is directly SOUTH.

[GamerRay]

Aha, changing its order in the list worked wonders!

1 last question (in theory); how do you get the 3d look to your floor edges? The shadowing on mine looks great, but there's no sense of depth to it. On yours, you can see that the serrated edging is above the water, but on mine it almost looks like a grey piece of paper sitting higher than a blue one.

[NeonKnight]

Aha, changing its order in the list worked wonders!

1 last question; how do you get the 3d look to your floor edges? The shadowing looks great, but there's no sense of depth to it. On yours, you can see that the serrated edging is above the water, but on mine is almost looks like a grey piece of paper sitting higher than a blue one.

Hmmm....without seeing your Sheets or Effects hard to say. Did you try making the opacity of the shadow darker (increase the percentage, mine is set for 75%)

[GamerRay]

That looks much better. Having it at 50%, in combination with having grid lines that were far too thick, was the problem.

Thanks so much for your help, Neon!