Greetings and salutations!

[Painkillah]

Fair greetings from a humble cartographer for the whole community!

Let me begin by saying that I stumbled into this community as a recommendation from someone I know. I must say, after browsing for a couple of minutes through the threads, I found some of the greatest maps I'll probably ever see. There's so much lore behind all of them it just gives me the shivers.

Info on me? Well, I'm 21 year old student living in Spain. I enjoy all forms of art, specially fantasy settings (even though I am no stranger to others either) but my strongest point would be 3D art. About two of months ago I stumbled into "Campaign Cartographer 3" while looking for a map-making tool and have been plotting some schemes for an old fantasy setting I had in mind ever since.
I will attach my first map ever created with CC3. I did it after learning the basics from Joseph Sweeney's great tutorials. It's pretty simple but it's a first so that's a good excuse.
Also, I do have a question. I will ask it here and, if it's not the place to do so, I'm hoping you will direct me towards the proper thread/area thing.

Q: How does one create those different shades of blue in the sea?
They are seen in the following picture: click here for picture.

And here is my first map:

[Redrobes]

Welcome painkillah, You will find quite a few CC3 users here. I reckon Neon or someone will tell you straight away how to do that but alas I cannot.

You will also run into our River Police soon so be sure to have your details ready and look meek and mild while they administer a brief rapping of ye knuckles for the twin violations of such ! You can search for multiple posts about rivers - a continuous theme of new map makers needing constant vigilance !

Good to see ya,

[NeonKnight]

Yep, River Violation, but an interesting looking area.

[Gamerprinter]

(A metallic voice harsh through the speakers coming from behind you - flashing blue lights) "Pull over" says the authoritative voice... "Cartographer's License and Registration, please." A man in black leather from head to toe, with a white metallic helmet and mirror sunglasses comes to your vehicle window. "This is a River Police incident, I'm afraid..."

Welcome to the Guild, I'm chief deputy Gamerprinter, and I'm issuing you a citation from placing geographically unsound rivers in your map! Don't feel bad, rivers seem to be the most mangled element of nature by many new mappers.

1. Rivers never fork downstream, they conjoin to form larger rivers from upstream. River deltas seem like an exception, but are not rather they are river channel changes caused by deposits of sediment in slow moving rivers being countered by the oceans tides. Sometimes rivers move around higher places in their path as in islands, but will always rejoin as one river.

2. Rivers never reach the sea from two different arms. Water flows downhill with the least resistance. Once a branch of a river reaches the sea, all upstream water follows the same course. They never split and reach the sea as two forks of the river - this never, never happens.

3. The old excuse that the river gods in your world made it so, is just that an excuse - River Gods are smarter than that!

Nice first map, good color, and excellent example of a first time user of CC3, so Kudos for you. Search the site we have some excellent tutorials explaining the elements like RIVERs, and other geologic/geographic elements: mountains, etc. Do read them so you can avoid future encounters with the River Police.

Welcome to the Guild.

GP

[silverhead]

Bienvenido. Pensé que era el único español aquí ;-)

(sorry to use a little spanish, but the situation asked for it)

[waldronate]

The different blues in the ocean are done by drawing sea depth contours of different colors.

I'm now a junior deputy River Police officer so I'll point out that rivers should (a) follow the steepest/shortest path from high ground to low ground [water flows downhill], (b) rivers join together on their way downhill to their outlet [tributaries pay tribute to the pain river], and (c) rivers don't split except in delta-type regions, which are usually small compared to the overall river length [distributaries distribute the water to the output].

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[Painkillah]

Thank you all very much!
I humbly request mercy from the River Police.

Great pointers guys, I will keep them in mind next time I go about creating rivers. I know that water flows downhill but I guess I was too excited to make a map with CC3 for the first time and I overlooked that bit focusing more on adding a sheet glow to the rivers and have them flow around some more to create a better looking area.

Here's a question related to the topic of rivers forking downhill. I'm not saying it applies on my map; mine are honest mistakes. Is it possible to make them fork downstream by human involvment?
Let's say there's a river flowing close to the woods and most of the area is innacessible because of rocks/mountains. Is it plausible to say that the humans living close to the woods deviated most of the river (ditch digging, blocking it with rocks and so on) so that they can build a lumber camp there? Or any other reason why humans would want to do that for that matter.

@silverhead:
Ahora vivo en España pero no estoy de aqui.
I live in Spain now but I ain't originally spanish.

@waldronate:
Is that done manually? Or is it an automate sort of thing, like the glowing of the land sheet for example? It seems that the depth layers are following the land countour quite well.
Maybe you could be a little more specific? I am rather new.

And a very big thank you to all of you for the warm welcome.
I will soon begin working on a map for a project and I'm sure your pointers will make it better!

[Redrobes]

You can make a river do whatever you want but a naturally occurring river in its normal amount of rainfall conditions after a long while will always pick one of the two forks and the other will dry. You can dam a river and create a channel which is much less than its capable capacity and tap that bit off for say a water mill. Also if a lot of rain falls then banks overflow and it goes everywhere for a short while. But in a geological time frame - there can be only one.

[Ascension]

As far as humans interfering with the natural course of a river...sure it can be done. It requires enormous amounts of time and labor. And that means it also requires a vast amount of either slaves or money in a pre-technological culture. The thing from a mapping standpoint that you need to concern yourself with is how this alteration will affect where the river goes from there. If it's rather close to a coast then it's most likely no big deal but if it's way inland then you should plan to maybe make the diverted river rejoin the main/previous river channel or all heck could break loose downstream.