Water and Lava - Part 3

Room 5 - The Falls

Getting falling water/lava to look natural is a tricky business. The key to it, I believe, is not to plan every detail meticulously, but rather to simply rough out the general details and then add brushes that "feel right" to finish it off. In the demo I have built a lava fall for you to examine more closely.

First, build the wall/cliff down which the water is to flow. Mark out where it is to start and finish, then use a combination of solid and air brushes (wedges are best) to get the look you desire. Bear in mind that nature rarely makes things that appear symmetrical or orderly and neither should you - the only exception would be if you were adding a man-made construction.

Once you have your wall as you wish, create your water/liquid, following the path of least resistance. Liquids will tend to follow any channels that are available, rather than try to create some of their own. The path of least resistance for my volcano is marked on the image below.

There are now two ways to fill in your water/lava. The first (and trickier) one is to use a copy of each of your carving brushes, set to fill flood, rotated so that angled edges face each other and raised slightly above the original brush.

Alternatively, if you used a large brush to make your wall, you can clone it and set the clone to "flood", then flow brush each of the channels of water.

Finally, carefully remove any square corners - with any luck the final result will be well worth the time spent on it. This a stage I did not complete for the example volcano, but hopefully you get the idea.

And that concludes the tour of the Water and Lava mission. I hope you have found it helpful!