how to properly build island with sc4tf ?

[Enzo]

hi,
i've decided to publish a mayor diaries, and as i want to start from the begining. I'm in the process of creating my own region with sc4tf. It'll be a 8x8 large city. In the pics below, you'll see some try i've done with island and i would be happy to have your view on this. basically, i've got two questions a specific one and a more general one :
1. How to properly "join" beach with land (i'm using white beach mod)  ?
2. Do you have any tips to build island ?

thanks

in SC4TF island 1 :


the same one in game north view :


south view :


in SC4TF island 2 :


in game :


created from deep water with volcano tools :


thank you for your comments

[wouanagaine]

Nice islands so far 

1. How to properly "join" beach with land (i'm using white beach mod)

By default, the game produce sand texture if the tile ( one of the 4 corner ) is between 0m and 3m altitude from sea level, ( so 250 to 253 in SC4TF ) and in a range of 5 tiles from water. This may help you build better beach, but I think that what you've done is really good

2. Do you have any tips to build island ?

< shameless promotion on >
Look at my island pack on STEX ( http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=17200 ), I made almost all islands using some real photo ( solar corona, galactic formation, clouds ) that I imported in SC4TF and rework in SC4TF
I made a lot of erosion/equalize pass, then using the contour lines drawing, I tried to smooth the contour line to have it nice and not jagged
I took long time to get the beach to go underwater very smoothly, with the smooth tool with big radius and a small strength
< shameless promotion off >

[Enzo]

ok thanks, and BTW any idea how I can remove this texture between 229m and 249m. It's water even if it's not clear water, it looks a bit muddy. I'm using standard colombus mod.

[wouanagaine]

I suspect you can change the alpha value of the water in the terran examplar ( open the columbus mod with reader )
of change the texture applied, but I don't know which on it is

[Enzo]

I think I'm gonna change the texture, as I'm not familiar at all with the tools ...
let me show by example to be sure we are speaking the same language. In the pics below, you can see water at different level ranging from 224m to 249m, this has been done with sc4tf. What I would like to avoid is the "dark" zone we can see in the water near the shore, where there is no such deep, apparently from 249m to 229m. I'm using the SMP Paradise Blue Water mod, any idea which should be used to avoid this ?



not sure to be very clear on this one ...

[wouanagaine]

Can you take a screenshort without water ? like when you lay down some water pipeline

[Enzo]

here it is : what is the reason beside this ?



at the center of the circle we are at height 224m and at the perimeter at 249 m, after there is the beach.

[wouanagaine]

The reason was to see if you have more than one underwater texture
Try to identify it in Reader, it should be in the columbus mod textures. Then replace it with the sand beach ( copy the sand beach 5 FSHs, and change their TGI to match thoses of the 5  underwater FSH textures )