Show us your Riverside, Lakeside, or Oceanside

[RedDunoVn 17]

Im still working on the oceanside. Any tips to make the ocean looks beautiful ?

[philforhockey51 4,220]

15 hours ago, RedDunoVn said:

Im still working on the oceanside. Any tips to make the ocean looks beautiful ?

Search for MMPs to plop along the shorelines

 

 

[RedDunoVn 17]

On 27/10/2019 at 5:53 AM, philforhockey51 said:

Search for MMPs to plop along the shorelines

thanks

[philforhockey51 4,220]

[Lucario Boricua 7,049]

Get ready for a rather impressive mosaic!

 

֍ STEEL RIVER ֎

MOUNT STEEL'S MOST SCENIC
LIQUID WATER BODY

 

 

And here's a close up to the Mount Steel Branch Railway over the Magcargo Falls!

[Naomi57 2,985]

Getting Started in creating your Seaside Landscapes

Vital tips on terraforming, beaches, decorating the sea floor, and customising your Maxis terrain, for getting started in creating beautiful seaside landscapes.

On 26/10/2019 at 8:52 AM, RedDunoVn said:

Im still working on the oceanside. Any tips to make the ocean looks beautiful ?

Terraforming

God-mode terraforming is a great starting place.  Hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys, and click the God-mode button to access the God-mode terraforming features, then Shift+1 to Shift+9 to alter the range from tiny to huge, and zoom in by pressing the 5 or 6 key for detailed work.  God-mode Quick Level Brush and Plains tools are the ones I use most often for my seaside terraforming, to extend the terrain from the start of your mouse stroke to the end of the mouse stroke.  Note also, that holding down the mouse button with the Plains tool gradually and gently raises coastlines to above sea level.  The God-mode Plains tool is also great for spreading the sparkling deep water closer to shore, using circular mouse strokes.

For fine tuned terraforming of single tile corners, Shift+1 using God-mode Hill and Shallow Valley tools provide excellent control for detailed work.  Note that the tile corner affected by these tools varies depending on which way you're facing.  I find them easiest to use while facing North.  Using 1x1 Street plops, then bulldozing it, is the best way to get level tiles, which are very useful for coastal roads, or preparing the ground for development close to coastal areas, or for beachside parks.  When plopping a park or plaza near the coast, note that the direction of the plop arrow determines the ground level of the park or plaza.  If you are wanting a slanting ground level, the NAM Pedmalls, and the Maxis vanilla Open Grass Area and Open Paved Area plops, conform to the existing terrain.

Beaches

Orthogonal mouse brush strokes, with the Quick Level Brush and Plains tools, along the seaside are ideal for preparing the coastline for Maxis Beach plops, which require orthogonal pieces of coastline 5 tiles wide.  Incidentally, Maxis Beach plops are the cheapest vanilla plop to improve land desirability, encouraging prosperous commercial and residential development in a 10 tile radius of the developed Beach site.  Terraforming and simple Maxis plops can produce very pleasing results.

I've got this mod on my shortlist to try one day.

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/2045-fm-beaches-for-irregular-coasts

Decorating

Occasional use of the Soften God-mode terraforming tool, allows you to quickly introduce coastal variation into sharp terrain seasides.  Decorating your sea bed requires draining the sea (temporarily), for which I use this Diagonal Bridge Enabler tool.  While building a diagonal bridge is tricky and iffy, using this mod to drain the sea for decorating the sea bed with plops, is dead easy.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2690  (Diagonal Bridge Enabler)
https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=3402  (SM2 Coastline and Marine MMPs)

You can also use the Diagonal Bridge Enabler tool to plant trees right up to the water line, or even underwater!

The Water Pollution and Pipes views can also be helpful for seeing underwater.

Customising the Maxis Default Terrain

Before you get too far with terraforming and beautifying, you'll want to choose terrain mods to transform the Maxis default terrain, rock, water and beach appearance into something that feels like home (or paradise) to you, and the best way to choose is by using @CorinaMarie's shoppes:

• Cori's Terrain Shoppe
• Cori's Water Shoppe
• Cori's Rock Shoppe
• Cori's Beach Shoppe
• Cori's Tree Shoppe

I'm going with the Wet Tropical terrain from the THL Terrain Pack as my starting place, which is just a slight tweak on Maxis default terrain.  This terrain mod also has the advantage of having no dependencies.  My water mod will probably be Pennsylvania Style from @rivit's Coastal Modd, which has more flexibility with 10 colours of rippled sea texture, 12 inshore colours, 5 sandy foreshore and beach colors,  4 rock foreshore colours and a transparent beach texture.  For myself, a Terrain mod and a Water mod is enough ... as I'm already very happy with Maxis default Rock, Beach and Tree settings.

As I understand it, the Terrain mod is the most important item from the above list, and even without a Water mod, it allows you to customise water transparency using the WaterMinAlpha and WaterDepthForMaxAlpha variables in iLive Reader, as explained in this tutorial.  I'm still on the learning curve for this stuff, so someone please do pipe up and comment if there's anything really important that I've missed!

[mattb325 28,891]

A small beach scene in a secluded cove:

 

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Down by the sea

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ByeByeBayou 1,938]

[Drack 616]

[Arn71 804]

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,198]

The waterfront of Yuba

[Jeffrey500 567]

[ByeByeBayou 1,938]

[Whte_rbt 1,431]

That highway half pipe looks fun.

Now where's my board?

[PlanetOfHats 506]

Part of the Beaches neighbourhood in Rushden, part of the southern Warrington suburbs.

[CT14 2,486]

You folks are good with those MMPs!

I've been having a lot of fun with Diggis Ponds, Sudden Valley and Cascadia Tree Controller. I found you can make little islands with the corner bits.

If you look closely you can see non-matching CAN-AM tiles - those have since been fixed with the Multiple Canals mod (confirmed working with NAM 37!)

[Christian_Knight78 44]

I hope I did this right. My region is "Star Wars" themed city names. So here is a series of pictures from Corruscant. It is oceanside and has a large lake that flows into the ocean. First is a photo tour of the ocean coast. Then from the channel to around the the shores of the lake and back to the ocean.

[JulioC 2,581]

Some people just enjoying the beach of Koria...


...and some looking for their own dinner

[Arn71 804]

[ByeByeBayou 1,938]

[TheEstGuy 721]

My riverside pictures of one city. Including: a big bridge, beaches, marinas and a lighthouse. (I don't care if it is realistic or not, at least I like it and I'm having a good time.)

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

12 minutes ago, TheEstGut said:

I don't care if it is realistic or not, at least I like it and I'm having a good time.

Indeed, and I completely agree with that mindset too. After all, the most important part about SC4 is being creative and having fun.

I like what you've made, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Terring 6,476]

50 minutes ago, TheEstGut said:

(I don't care if it is realistic or not, at least I like it and I'm having a good time.)

Which is always the most important

[Dgmc2013 947]

On 27/08/2020 at 1:05 PM, TheEstGut said:

My riverside pictures of one city. Including: a big bridge, beaches, marinas and a lighthouse. (I don't care if it is realistic or not, at least I like it and I'm having a good time.)

Considering that's a 2003 game, it's truly hard make him "realistic". The important is having fun. Good pictures, after all!

[TheEstGuy 721]

I know this is not a region showcase, but I wanted showcase the rivers of it. I first thought of showing them individually, but I had some difficulities. So I thought Neh im going to show the whole region then. So here you have it Bananaland region with lots of rivers with different sizes and with their own unique properties. When i made the rivers i made them also quite curvy because most of the rivers in the world have it and I made deltas for them too.                  (If you are interested in it, the region is also downloadable) 

[Lucario Boricua 7,049]

@TheEstGut

 

I actually like that this has the feel of a karst landscape on the east half, especially digging the rounded lakes and sinkholes  alternating with lumpy hills! Maybe you could interrupt some river stretches to make the appearance of subterranean rivers at the heart of karst areas.

[JulianMIA 1,609]

On ‎8‎/‎27‎/‎2020 at 12:05 PM, TheEstGut said:

My riverside pictures of one city. Including: a big bridge, beaches, marinas and a lighthouse. (I don't care if it is realistic or not, at least I like it and I'm having a good time.)

Beautiful beaches, and they are not easy to do!  And you are right about the good time.  I primarily build my city in a way that I reflect what I wish it was rather than what it is... 

 

 

[TheEstGuy 721]

On 30.8.2020 at 6:56 PM, JulianMIA said:

Beautiful beaches, and they are not easy to do!

Yeah thanks! And yes I do carefully plan beaches if I do them. Having a good time is actually one of the most important things. 

 

On 30.8.2020 at 7:33 AM, Lucario Boricua said:

I actually like that this has the feel of a karst landscape on the east half, especially digging the rounded lakes and sinkholes  alternating with lumpy hills! Maybe you could interrupt some river stretches to make the appearance of subterranean rivers at the heart of karst areas.

Yeah I made this area for like a hilly wetlands style terrain. I actually never viewed it as karst but that's quite interesting also. I think that the subterranean river idea is awesome but I am not sure how would it be done? So I dont exactly know about that. 

[Dgmc2013 947]

A few closes in the San Girolamo city coast (even the quality of the images isn't the best)