]
 
 
 
       Home                Company                Products                Gallery                Store                Links
 

« Previous page

Creating Rivers in WorldBuilder 4: Defining the River Banks

Now it's time to add the River / Ocean object. This is a special kind of water object that, although it does appear in the Scene Tree with a full compliment of Properties, cannot be selected or manipulated directly in the viewports, like a Skeleton Line or Camera or Landscape object can.

In the Creation toolbar, click once on River/Ocean.

The first thing we' ll need to do is ‘assign' the riverbanks, by using the Channel Definition Property Page.

Select River_0 in the Scene Tree.

In the Properties Tree, click on Select Shores.

Click on Left Shore, and then select SkeletonLine_Riverbank_Left.

Click on Right Shore and select SkeletonLine_Riverbank_Right.


In the Top Viewport we should be able to see the River object following the contours of the Skeleton Lines.

We should also be able to see the Flow arrows, indicating the direction in which our river will be flowing.

If the river is flowing upward, or in the positive Y direction, click on the Reverse Flow button in the River's Channel Definition Property Page.

NOTE: If you get an error message about Mesh Steps, don't worry. Just select Settings in the Properties Tree and change the Mesh Step parameter from the default of 15 to 0.5. You'll notice the Vertices Number value rise or fall in accord with the settings; at a Mesh Step setting of 15 the Vertices Number will probably be zero.


Ok, so let's render the scene with the trees cleared out and the river flowing through.

So far so good. Now that we can see our river rendered and flowing, let's examine some of its editable characteristics.

The river controls can be thought of as being divided into two separate but related groups:

  • The Flow and Perturbations properties
    (belonging to the River object itself), and

  • The Material properties, belonging to the River's subset Area 1(full)

We'll need to make sure our river is at the correct height.

Select River and then select Height Above Surface (Properties Tree). Keep in mind that the river should be no higher than the Skeleton Lines defining its banks (otherwise it would be flooding!).

Set the Height Above Surface value to be a little lower than that of the left and right riverbank Skeleton Lines.


« Previous page