river placement, rainfall, altitude

[satyesu]

I purchased Fractal Terrains 3 and am trying to place rivers but want to take into account rainfall, altitude, etc and both are on different displays. How do you know where rivers make sense on your maps?

[waldronate]

Thank you for your purchase.

Did you try asking FT to place rivers for you? FT's river model takes into account temperature and rainfall. The major failing in FT's climate modeling is the lack of heat and moisture transport by wind and ocean, but if you paint in appropriate average rainfall and temperatures, FT's river model is not terrible.

[satyesu]

How can I learn how to alter that into something plausible?

[waldronate]

Reading the thread http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...ght-place.html is a good start.

Reading a book on physical geography is also a good way. There are quite a few online, including Geography : Physical Geography ( see 7(p) Global Scale Circulation of the Atmosphere for a discussion of global atmospheric circulation ). There are also quite a lot of resources under the topic of "worldbuilding" in your favorite search engine.