As yet unnamed Continent: Rivers

[Jallorn]

So, I'm making this map, (shocker, I know) and I'm at the stage where I want to figure out where my rivers go, how much of them I want to show, and how I want to render them. So far I've gotten a basic landmass and some mountains that I'm... mostly happy with, but I'm looking for opinions about the rivers because I so often come back to a map I previously did and think, "I don't like what I did with those rivers, it doesn't look realistic to me anymore," or similar thoughts. This won't stop that, I'm sure, but it will at least let me move on to the next step anyway.

So, the map is approximately the size of Europe, from Iberia to around Poland for scaling. The included images are a copy of the map without rivers, a sort-of topographical map (the topography is purely generated from the mountains, rather than being derived from the meeting place of mountains and ocean as would probably be better) as well as both maps with rivers on them, as a simple black line plan on the topography map, and as a basic render on the normal map.

[Hai-Etlik]

Well, try looking carefully at the real thing:



The big issues are that you have all your rivers starting at mountains, and then flowing in straight lines. Try to cover the area with river start points and squiggle the rivers more.

[Jallorn]

So, what, just plant random start points everywhere? How many, especially since I don't want a complete watershed, I just want the main rivers?

[Hai-Etlik]

However many gives an appropriately detailed river map for your purposes. If you want to could try going denser to start and then remove the lesser rivers but that shouldn't be necessary. It would help if you plan to do larger scale maps of smaller regions in that you could add that detail back in at that point. If you go extra dense you could also try to emulate the tendency of people to pick one tiny little stream to be the "main stem" of each river of significance. If you do that, once you've decided which rivers to include, work back up and include one path all the way back to the start. A simpler way to emulate this would just be to add a bit extra to the start of each river (so pick start point and go to the sea or another river, but then go back and add a bit extra. This will shift the distribution of river start points in a way that mimics how people actually make maps

I've noodled with trying to automate this but haven't had time to tidy up my experiments into a proper tool.

https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=26931

[nwisth]

Wow, I looked at your old thread, Hai-Etlik - very impressive! I could really use a tool where you put in a precipitation map and some sort of height map to get rivers and lakes. I've used Wilbur but haven't figured out how to tell it what areas get a lot of rain and which ones are dry. Do you have any tips?

-Niels

[jesterman]

My first suggestion would be to find the points of lowest elevation and draw some lakes or something. It's easier to start, I beleive when you know where your lakes are and lowest points of elevation

Also, when two rivers come together, often times it doubles, if not triples, the size of the river, and usually a river has hundereds of tiny starting points in areas of the mountains, and these rivers and starting points only really start in areas on your mountains of lower elevation, such as between two mountains, rather than start as one large river near the top, especially if much of your water is provided by snow melt off. Therefor, the starting points of your rivers probably should not start near areas of higher elevation (or atleast the tops of the mountains) but rather around the base and in between mountains where water soaks into the ground and collects to the point where it becomes one mass of water, and rarely are they as large as you have it (usually you have many tiny streams that collect together.

Other than that though, you seem to have this well covered, as well as knowing the one most important rule to map makers: water goes down (I have seen so many maps where the rivers are placed in random all-too convenient places on maps) and you seem to be doing a good job. What program are you using?

[Greason Wolfe]

Unless Waldronate has made some.significant changes to Wilbur that I don't know about, it assumes a uniform amount of rainfall for the entire terrain. You could, however, do the river flow operation multiple times, adjusting the river length slider each time. You would then have to merge the results together to create the illusion of heavier rainf fall in some areas. Would post an example but am away from my computer for a few more days.

[Jallorn]

Just GIMP. Actually, I've reworked my network to my satisfaction, and while there's one or two rules you mention that I don't follow, I'm probably going to stick with what I've got, at least for this scale. Here, have a look.

I discovered the path tool, and managed to find an extension that does tapered lines over the path. Thanks everyone for the help!