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How would I create a simple but nice looking river?

Even a small creek or stream of water i just want to know some good ways of doing this!

Todd McIntosh
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sketcherskt
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    To get the most from this site it is recommended to show what you've tried, this gives us an idea of your level or familiarity with Blender, and helps give answers. As it stands the question is too vague and we have no idea what kind of answers would be most suitable. Do you know how to model? – zeffii Jun 10 '15 at 15:05
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    You have tagged your question with both 'game-engine' and 'blender-render' which one are you using? – Ray Mairlot Jun 10 '15 at 15:11
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    i would recommend this video for your question https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNWIUqETWfA – agha rehan abbas Jun 10 '15 at 15:21
  • Since the OP accepted the answer as useful, I've gone ahead and edited the question to be more specific. Let me know if it's acceptable. – Todd McIntosh Jun 10 '15 at 17:11

1 Answers1

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One of the tricky things about rivers is how to animate the water ripples along the path of the curving river. The best way that I have found to do this is by adding a Displacement Modifier set to UV texture coordinates and using a Noise/Cloud texture as well as UV unwrapping the mesh first before extrusion.


There are two important secrets to this technique.

  1. One is UV unwrapping the river water mesh as a straight line first before you alter it to fit the river shape. If you start with a plane, unwrap it right away, then the UV map will stay straight even if you extrude the plane edges to form the curved river shape.

enter image description here



  1. Secondly, you need to enable the AnimAll addon so that you can animate the UV map.

enter image description here

Once you do that you can set two keyframes for the UV map and then animate it moving from top to bottom. In the Tools panel on the left, choose the Animation tab (after enabling the AnimAll addon). Select the UV checkbox, and click the Insert keyframe button at the appropriate frames after moving the UV map.

enter image description here


This will move the texture image along the river and will also move the displacement along the river. Once your UV's are set and animated you can use those texture coordinates for material textures or displacement modifier textures.

enter image description here



Here's a test scene using this technique:

enter image description here

Todd McIntosh
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  • @sketcherskt I'm glad this answer helped you. It would be great if you could modify your question so that it more accurately reflected what you were looking for. This way the post will be clearer and will help others more effectively in the future. – Todd McIntosh Jun 10 '15 at 16:42
  • I just edited the question to be more specific. Let me know if it does not reflect the main point of your original question. – Todd McIntosh Jun 10 '15 at 16:47
  • hey todd mcintosh how was i suppose to know how to make a river and be that specific i thought how to make a river would be enough info and it seemed so but im glad you edited my question to make it more specific. – sketcherskt Jun 10 '15 at 16:52
  • also how do i add keyframes to uv's? – sketcherskt Jun 10 '15 at 16:53
  • You use the AnimAll addon to give you keyframe ability on the UV map. I've added an extra screen shot in the answer. – Todd McIntosh Jun 10 '15 at 17:02
  • Hey I Kinda Put this project to the side but im still having trouble where you say "Once you do that you can set two keyframes for the UV map and then animate it moving from top to bottom." my uv map looks like a plane with just 4 verts making a squire. but yours has many lines and verts. – sketcherskt Jun 19 '15 at 02:47
  • Yeah, you UV unwrap the plane because that's easier, then you extrude the edge in the direction of the river. Once done, you can add some more edge loops in the middle if need be. Because you unwrapped it first, your UV map is straight even though the mesh is curvy. Then you can key frame the UV map vertically in a straight line and the movement on the mesh follows the curves of the river without distortion. – Todd McIntosh Jun 19 '15 at 05:06
  • I don't get how to "move the UV map" ... where do you select it and grab it ??? i miss this step... help please – invicente Jan 29 '16 at 22:12
  • There's a grid of vertices in the Image editor panel when your object is in Edit mode. You can select all of them in the image area and move them with the G command just like you would in mesh mode. – Todd McIntosh Jan 29 '16 at 22:22