OpenGeofiction
So I took a decent break from OGF to do other things… along the way I got employed, and as I come back home from work, I find myself gradually pulling back towards OGF and my country of HIltonia.
That being said… someone please explain the ins-and-outs of drawing good looking waterways. My waterways make sense geographically generally, but I can’t get them to look right, especially in terms of deltas and things like islands and patterns like the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I don’t know how to really “draw” them in JOSM so that they look natural. It seems like everyone around me knows how to do it right.. but I find myself still unable to do it no matter how many real world examples I use.
Thanks and it’s good to be back here!
Discussion
Comment from Demuth on 24 October 2015 at 09:22
I’ve really struggled with this as well. And I kind of failed with the waterways in my first country, Wiwaxia. But I’m trying hard to be better with my second country, Østermark, which is much better but I’m still not completely satisfied. But what I did was look at a bunch of OSM maps of places that seemed to have a feel I wanted: parts of the west coast of Canada as well as Labrador, the Gulf of Bothnia and the coast of Norway in Scandinavia, Sakhalin Island north of Japan. It gave me a feeling for the patterns of small lakes, streams and ponds, their size, shape and placement in relation to each other. I also tried to form my rivers, lakes with my geography in mind thinking of how the water would flow. So my biggest recommendation is to look at maps of places in OSM you want to emulate, see how they did it and try to match it.
Looking at Hiltonia, I think you get the winding nature of rivers right, but your big river that ends in a lake by Southport, for example, is much too regular: it’s probably the right width where it empties into the lake, but it’s much too wide as it moves towards its source. And it needs to have tons of things like streams feeding into it and arms branching off and feeding back in that create islands. Also, the shoreline of that lake is too regular as well I feel. Again, just look at a bunch of OSM maps and try to emulate. A lot of your other rivers are better, it’s a matter of really going into detail, and it takes a lot of time!
Comment from Luciano on 24 October 2015 at 23:59
I think the key to water is realizing that rivers and shorelines are FRACTAL. Thus getting realistic appearance is about just adding lots of nodes to your ways, in almost random fashion, at high zooms. I have a technique where I will sketch a way at low zoom, then go in and add node and drag it a little bit, randomly, left or right, up or down. Zoom some more, and add nodes between existing nodes, dragging each one a bit, randomly. Zoom some more, repeat… Or I will use a freehand drawing tool, and let mistakes and odd results remain, intentionally.
For large rivers, too, it is important to draw more than one “curvy line” - draw two, or three, or more, and then use the “parallel line” generator and build some polygons, which you can merge into nice “braided patterns” with realistic-looking river islands (as I have done with Río de Lotos in the Ardisphere).
For deltas - this may sound strange, but I’ve had some success with it: I take photographs of plants and trees, load them as image to JOSM, and trace them (with lots of discretion). The Macondo inland delta in the Ardisphere, which I’m quite proud of, is actually a cluster of trees in silhouette. I intend to do this for other inland delta areas in the Costa de Dragones region of that country. I also did this, in more rudimentary fashion, when I made the Aroog River delta at Drull, which is another tree photo.
Happy mapping!
Comment from Sarepava on 25 October 2015 at 12:04
Read up a little primary geography on how rivers form and develop. In general they have bigger and gentler meanders the closer to the sea. Don’t forget too that human activity can create and change waterways. So there may be canals which are more regular shapes, and places where rivers have been altered to aid navigation or drainage. Some natural waterways will have locks and weirs to maintain the water level, cuts through meanders.
Another thing to consider is landscape. Water can form steep gorges and large flat plains as well as marsh, swamp, hills, mangrove forest, farmland, glaciers, harbours etc.
Comment from isleño on 25 October 2015 at 21:26
Great advice here.
To combine some elements of what the others have said: real world examples are great, but… if you’re having trouble imitating those examples, a really neat feature of JOSM is that you can import an image and display it in the background.
See here for details:
http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/OGF:Using_Image_Files_in_JOSM
This allows you to actually trace a section of river, or the outline of a lake, or a stretch of coastline. Of course you’ll want to make your version a little different from the real life version, to disguise it from the actual place (like, rotate it around, change the shape a bit, etc – we don’t want to see recognizable real places in OGF). Of course you’ll also want to check the scale to be sure you’re tracing at the right size.
But it’s a good way to start, and after a few times you’ll start picking up on the patterns and maybe even you’ll start drawing this stuff without the help of an image.
Comment from Zeffy on 28 October 2015 at 02:28
Thanks for the tips everyone. Some of the rivers in my country are actually pretty decent; of course some still look like absolute crap.