River Tool Reference

 

 

What is the River Tool?

The River tool is a shape creation tool that allows the designer to place a moving water area. 

The below image is of the river tool with Materials/Ocean/river_sphere.mtl assigned to it. 

The river tool is similar to the road tool, however the river is always a flat area, and the designer has to modify the terrain around it in order to make the river surface not appear to be hovering in the air. 

The river tool can be found in Rollup Bar > Misc 

Benefits

The river tool allows the creation of moving surfaces that have depth, which means that any type of moving non solid surfaces can be modelled. 

Properties

MTL 

Shows which material is currently assigned to it. Consider using a material from one of the crisis level ( /Ocean/river_sphere.mtl ) as a base and then modify it. 

Minimal Spec 

Used for setting in which hardware configuration the entity is rendered or not, not recommend to be changed for river tool, as rivers should be rendered on all specs. 

Width 

The Width of the river. (Usually set much wider than the actual river width, as the visual river width is defined by its surrounding terrain. 

BorderWidth 

Only used for the Align Height Map function, this will make a smooth edge on the terrain geometry if the BorderWidth value is higher than the Width value. 

StepSize 

Smaller StepSize will increase the polycount used for the river surface, so for river with smooth corners you want to use a smaller Size than the default 4. 

ViewDistRadio 

Specifies how far the river entity will be rendered. 

TileLength 

The Length of the River Texture. Tweak this in combination with StepSize to avoid stretching textures. 

Depth 

Specifies the Depth of the River 

Speed 

Defines how fast physicalized objects will be moved 

FogDensity 

Specifies how Dense the Underwater Fog looks like 

FogColor 

Sets the Underwater Fog Color 

FogColorMultiplier 

Defines how bright the Underwater Fog Color is. 

UScale 

Sets the Texture tiling on the U Axis 

VScale 

Sets the Texture tiling on the V Axis 

Shape Editing 

Edit button will allow to modify, adding (CTRL click on a line) or deleting (double click on a point) of points on the line of the river shape. 

Width 

Sets the Width of the river per Point 

Align Height Map 

Will modify the terrain geometry based on the shape of the river and its border width parameter. 

Editing single points

When you enter Edit mode, you can select individual points of your river. Unchecking “Default Width” will allow you to type a specific width for the road at that point in the type in box below. 

Other River Tool Parameters 

Click here for the Miscellaneous Parameters reference guide.