Waterfalls

[justkae]

How do you demarcate waterfalls? I can't seem to find anything that's really good for 2D waterfalls on maps?

[LunaticDesign]

Probably very badly and it's something I'm still working on but I've found that having them taper toward the bottom and using a detail pen to make it look a little misty as well as having the flow broken up in places by rocks helps.

[Tiana]

I usually just put a cloud around a tapering end of a river, and then it's smaller at the bottom. I don't have many good examples of waterfalls in 2d and if I can, I'll try to do an isometric or cartographer-was-sitting-there-drawing-from-real-life angle for it instead. Waterfalls are easily my least favorite top down element that almost everyone wants on their map, and I admit I haven't got an awesome solution for them yet.

[DrWho42]

i'm afraid that's one of the cons to the top-down view as you can't perceive the water's actual fall from a bird's-eye view.

[Jaxilon]

Well, if you want for accuracy and realistic you might use the resources of Google Earth and check out Niagra Falls.

That shows the massive fall as well as a few others around it.

I am fairly happy with the ones I did on Elechos (click near the middle of the map and see the waterfalls leading into La Tripolitame).

To me the delineation of top down waterfalls come from the point at the top where the water turns white as it leaves the riverbed and the mist that forms as the water falls along with the rapids created once it hits the base and churns the water.

A lot depends on how far away you are creating your view from. Even Niagra Falls, which is huge, doesn't look like much if you go high enough.

[Badger]

waterfall_topdown.jpg

This is kinda like Tiana was describing, but this is how I do them, and like the others here, I agree with them being a pain in the neck. I haven't found anything better yet for waterfalls tho.

Del

[KMAlexander]

Few ideas, first depending on how you're doing your mountains, Josh Stolarz has a great tutorial.

Historically waterfalls were represented in varying ways; for example, here's how Henry Popple did it in his 1733 Map of the British Empire in America.

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In this 1929 map from Touring Club Italiano, they didn't do much except a little X and labeling the waterfall. (Gullfoss is an amazing fall in Iceland and worth visiting, FWIW.)

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1851 R.M. Martin just labeled it.

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H.G. Johnson sorta 3D-ed in 1849, but he's a wild man. Look how he's displaying the buildings. Heh.

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John Melish did an interesting texture shift in 1891.

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You could also do something like this—this is a satellite view of an underwater waterfall off the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.

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