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Lake and river in Unreal

FlowYour own open world: 13 of 25

Know first: Water in the world: lakes, rivers and shores

This flow walks you through setting up a lake in Unreal and a river that flows into it. The Water system cuts the bed for both. You set the level, the outline, the channel, the junction and the color of the water, then check it all as a player would see it. It is the practice for the lesson Water in the world. The lesson explains why a lake level is flat, where to draw the outline and how water cuts its own bed. Here you get what to click and how to check the result.

Goal

Before: a landscape with a bowl for the lake and a valley for the river. After: a lake at a level of 120 m with a shoreline that sits at one height all the way round. A river comes down from 140 m and flows into it with no step and no seam. Both beds are cut into the ground automatically. The numbers are an example; use your own.

Water Zone: covers all the water source140 m134 m126 m 120 m level 120 m all outline points at the same height outline = shore mouth overlaps the lake
Top view. Gray lines connect points of equal ground height. The colored dashed line is the lake outline. The lake cuts its own bed, so the outline becomes the shoreline, and it runs along the slope, where the ground is a little above the water. The white points are the points of the river spline, from the source to the mouth, each one lower than the one before. The last point sits at the lake level and reaches into the lake.

Further in the article

  1. What you need to start
  2. Steps
  3. If it doesn’t come out right
  4. Checklist
  5. Theory
  6. Sources and further reading
  7. Test yourself