Plopable Water - Detailing your shorelines

[Battlecat]

Detailing Tahoe Style Plopable Water Shorelines

Hello everyone!  This is a repost of a tutorial from my MD, it was suggested that I add it to the tutorials section here.  This particular tutorial is focused on the Tahoe style water and associated textures created recently by Pegasus.  Keep in mind that while I might speak in definite terms in the various stages of my tutorial, this is only one of many different approaches that can be taken to detailing with these tools! 

There are three core plugins I'm using for the details.  They are the RRP flora, Peg's PPond kit and Peg's PPond Terrain Prop Pack 1.  I'm not going to present the specific brushes in each of these packs, there is plenty of room for discovery here!

67-1: So with all that being said, here's how I'm dealing with the shorelines.  This is the area I'm going to use for this sample.


67-2: First of all, layout of a rough shoreline using the quarter sized Tahoe tiles.  These are guides for the placement of the other textures. 


67-3: The first texture acts as the base for the entire shore.  One key thing with these textures: use single clicks to place them instead of dragging.  Vary the quantities and sizes of the groupings.  In this case I'm using the coarse gravel texture from the original PPond Kit. If you wanted a grassier shore, the new grass and clover brushes from prop pack 1 would work out nicely.


67-4: The second pass along the shore is the secondary base.  In this case, I've chosen the small pebble style, also from the original PPond kit.  This one is nice because it can plop over and between the larger coarse gravel plop to help smooth the edges and break up the circular shape of the larger texture. 


67-5: Next, I add a highlighting texture.  I'm using one of the new sand brushes from prop pack 1 here, in very limited quantities.


67-6: At this stage it's time to start blending the shoreline in with the terrain.  Here I've done a fairly generous pass with the moss brush which is a darker green.  I push it quite close to the shore in some places to give the feel of greenery right on the shore in some places.   


67-7: Now I've added a variety of small shrubs to add some vertical depth to the shore.  Here I've added the two RRP shrubs and some Johnston Grass.  Make sure you avoid straight lines and even placement on a wild shoreline!  The human eye is amazingly good at finding patterns of that sort. 


67-8: In some places you should add additional vertical grasses in from the shore, but not too much or you won't be able to place other textures around them.


67-9: Now I've added some coarse RRP grass I'm using to further blend inwards from the gravel and to add some extra noise to the shore.  This one is quite visible, so choose your quantity carefully depending on the style you're looking to create.


67-10: And then on this pass I've added a fine coating of the RRP green rye grass.  Probably one of my favorite brushes because it's so thin.  It really nicely blurs the edge between the gravel and the terrain mod you're using.  This is also the time to start bringing any odd texture details down to the shore.  In this case, there's an underground powerline running through that cut through the trees. 


67-11: Finally, there are a lot more brushes available.  Create some little details to catch the eye and break up the patterns.  Dead trees, small patches of wildflowers and logs on the shore can be very effective.   


67-12: Here's a closer look at a few details I added at this stage. 


67-13: Now we need to close in the rest of the terrain details on each side.  This next step is subtle but important.  Take the quarter sized Tahoe and carefully fill in the gaps on the shore.  It takes a bit of practice to get used to exactly where the water is going to fall, but don't worry too much, you want it to overlap with your shoreline textures a little bit. 


67-14: Next do your first pass with the full sized Tahoe tiles.  Again, click by click your way along the shoreline to give you a good sized buffer.  The main reason to do this is to make it easier and safer to do the bulk filling for the rest of the area.  Granted, one nice thing about plopable shorelines in general is that you can bulldoze a small section and replace it without too much trouble.


67-15: I usually recommend filling in the water first. I find it helps put one in the mindset that this is a coastline which might help you spot any odd places that need taking care of. 


67-16: Once you hit this stage, the final step is to fill in your details right down to the shoreline.  In my case, this part of Adara is solid coniferous forest right down to the waterline.  In other locations you might want a wider beach, or a band of shorter trees before getting to this stage.  If you want development close to the water put it in FIRST!  When lots develop in SC4 any plopable feature on neighboring tiles may be deleted at random.  It's also probably a good idea to make housing near these shores historical once you have a building you're satisfied with. 


67-17: The result in the end should look pretty good at the closest zoom, but the further out you zoom, the better it will look due to the way the game treats the zoom levels. 


And that's a wrap for this particular tutorial.  There are many approaches to detailing shorelines, as evidenced by the wide variety visible in MD's these days.  While this is the approach I use, you could easily substitute other brushes along the shore just to see what happens!  Also, you could use rocks instead of grass to blend in the shore.  Don't be afraid to experiment!

The one thing to remember when detailing natural shorelines is to avoid repeating patterns!   Vary the width, quantity and spacing of the textures on your shoreline just like in the real world.  It does take a bit longer since you can't just click and drag the texture, but the results are usually worth it.

[sumwonyuno]

Very nice tutorial and I'm glad you've posted it for more people to see! 

[Ennedi]

Very good tutorial! You really grasped all important aspects of creating natural shorelines:

- Single clicks, not dragging;
- Leaving a space for next ploppable items;
- Merging various tyles and sizes of ploppable gravel, stones and plants;
- Avoiding repetitive patterns;
- Using RRP coarse and then fine grass to make smooth transitions between the coastline and the terrain texture (btw the Green Rye Grass was made by Chrisadams for my request, especially for making such transitions as you showed!  )
- Ploppable water plopping order.

I would only add one tip: if we use the same   bushes or other little plants (not too much!) on both sides of the border between two backgrounds (for example some of them between gravel patches and some on the grassy terrain texture), you will hide the background transition very effectively. As always we should try to avoid repetitive patterns.

A Karma point from me for an excellent tutorial! 

Adam

Edit: Now I'm working on terrain textures and I often have a problem: how to make a nice transition between two very different textures?
There are two effective ways:
- Different backgrounds, the same details, or
- The same background, different details.
The same methods can be used to ploppable stuff too.

[jim4866]

This tutorial has been the best one to date.  I have been using your advice since and it has really made my cities more realistic than ever. Thank you for your posting, it has made the game play more interesting.

[CrossSide]

That looks great! Never saw this Tut, it will be of great help.

Battlecat, can I ask you which terrain you are using? It looks much better then the default maxis terrain I'm using

[TheMentalist]

There is also another funny way to use ploppable water. You can simply flood you city as I did in my CJ. But be careful not to drawn too many Sims.