LAKES: Tips & Tricks | Inkarnate Stream

hello everyone it's stream time today we're going to be covering lakes and we're going to be doing all of that in the fantasy world style now if you want to follow along on today's stream you can totally clone and edit this map you'll find that pinned in the chat if you're watching on YouTube you'll find that in the video description now as always whenever you're working on any kind of map doesn't matter if it's a world Regional whatever it might be you need to set some rules and one of the very first rules you should probably set is scale and to do that you turn on your grid okay and that each one of those cells is going to represent a certain number of miles or whatever your metric is so you could say that it's 200 square miles or 500 square miles it's really up to you if you're very specific about how big your land masses are and how close each City and each point of interest is to each other that's super important to you then you're definitely going to want to be sticking to a scale in this one I went which is 500 ft of course when it comes to lakes or bodies of water like lakes and rivers you might scale up just a little bit because probably at those larger those kind of scales it's really hard to see lakes or even rivers on uh a map at that scale so it's okay to blow it up a little bit to make your leges just a little bit bigger and when you're adding your Lakes by the way what's super important is is that you only need to show a leg unless it's somehow important in your campaign or your book or whatever it might be you know don't throw in a random Lake just because you want some Lakes there I recommend that you throw one in because it's important an event takes place there whatever it might be right so just kind of keep that in mind once you've set that grid the next one is to set your climate zones and I just make a little climate zone guide by using the grid and the center line is the equator and then going up and down are the different types of climate zones and that's going to be really really helpful to establish that right away because then you can figure out where each biome is going to be because some biomes exist in certain climate zones While others do not so it's super important to have that what's really great about Lakes is they can be found anywhere when it comes to Earth physics they can be found anywhere in any uh altitude in any climate zone it doesn't matter so Lakes awesome so cool that you can find them anywhere and you don't have to worry so much but of course there are certain types of lakes that can be found in certain places the climate zone is actually if you're cloned and edit the map and you're following along look in that right panel and you'll notice that there's under objects a list of objects I've labeled it and there's it's also locked just make sure that you click it and then click the opacity set it to whatever you want it to be it should be set to zero because that way I can hide things in and out okay so that's how you would find that and I also have a guide like this on my uh um on my profile that you can use and apply it to kind of any map that you want all right so I'm going to go ahead and turn it off for now or at least down to a lower opacity and I'm going to turn the grid off for right now and what we're going to do is we're going to talk about kind of the first type of Lake it's kind of a common one and it's called a tectonic Lake and as you probably guessed it has a lot to do with plate tectonics okay and what I like to generally do is I before I put down a lake I like to take the path tool and then kind of make the shape of the lake first and you can use whatever kind of path you want and that the point of that is just so that you don't have to keep using the mask tool or the path tool or a texture and keep doing it over and over again if you make the general outline shape of the lake first with a path then you can just rotate it move it around and it's editable right so it's you can edit it it makes it easier so path tool is a great start okay now with plate tectonics with specifically these Lakes is there are shifts in plate tectonics that kind of change the the elevation of the land around it and then it fills up with either rain water or snow melt or if there's a water source from a river that comes from the mountains so it's going to be um basically where te plate tectonics have taken place and one of the most dramatic places that you can see the visual effect with your own eyes at that scale is mountaining ranges right a lot of mountain ranges are made with this process called subduction and it causes plates to buckle and fold up creating mountain ranges so that's where the most dramatic places that you can kind of find plate tectonics so it's a great place to put your Lakes it's not the only reason why it's a great place to put Lakes it's because lakes also get might get their Headwaters from somewhere in the mountains in a mountain lake or a volcanic Lake somewhere a Crater Lake somewhere so it's always nice actually to have your lakes near mountains or wherever it doesn't really matter but that's kind of the easiest one on putting your uh where to put your tectonic Lake and I'll show you how I go about um doing this so I'll go ahead and remove I think this in ad mode and we're going to remove all this stuff right here and I'll go ahead and make the lake again so you can see how I do it there are multiple ways that you can do water on your map and one of the big things that determines it is your mask effects if you have crazy mask effects with waves and the outer Shadow and all that stuff you might not want to use the add or the subtract mode of the Mask tool to make your water because the mask effects might make it look weird especially if you're making rivers or tiny lakes and there's they're not very big so mask tool I'll go ahead and show you how I use that is I'll go ahead and take the circle brush and I'll scale it down if you hold down the shift key and use your mouse scroll wheel you can control um the mask and you want to make sure you're set to subtract mode and if you kind of hover over it you'll see you can also a shortcut key D over to it and what I'll do is I'll take a relatively small brush size around three and you can make the outline like this and I'm putting it close to the mountains once the outline is done then I can go in and make it a little bit larger and then fill it in so think make the outline first and then fill it in okay and you can also use the bucket tool for that as well it's up to you because the scale is so so small I don't even need to use the bucket tool all right now that I've kind of made the shape of the lake there's a couple things that you can do here you can show that the headwaters that there's maybe water snow rain melt coming from the mountains so you can use the mask tool and I'm going to use the smallest brush okay and then coming from the the mountains well maybe have some water sources coming from the mountains and then going into the lake now that's one way that a tectonic Lake can be filled up it can also be filled with a lot of water so if you want if you're specific about it and you know the history of that Lake and you want it to be where there's a lot of rain then put it in your temperate zone because there's a lot of rain in your temperate zone but if your water's coming from maybe snow melt then it's okay to kind of put it maybe closer to the Equator or whatever it's okay it really just depends now what I also like to do when I'm throwing in a leg is I want to throw in maybe an island or two just because hey it can look really dramatic by throwing in maybe a little island and then maybe there's a location on the island in your map what works really well in fantasy whenever you're making anything especially with lakes is is that it's a mix between the more realistic and the more Fantastical when you have the fantas itical clashing against the normalized then it really pops out doesn't it and that's what how you make a dramatic map is combining both realistic Elements which could be scale and whatnot and where your mountain ranges are and then the more Fantastical part where you have maybe a mushroom forest or whatever it might be when it comes to a lake you can add some fantastic elements to the lake right an island is not a Fantastical element but it's a great element to add in then you can just put a little POI on top top of there it could be a marker an icon whatever you want might want it to be and I'm going to also change a little bit of the edge cuz if you notice this is kind of a really oblong Lake let's go ahead and change it just a little bit so the shape is a little bit more interesting instead of just that blob and what's also really nice to do is because there's a wetland you can also throw in with the ad mode and kind of just break it up into pools as well multiple Lakes becomes more interesting when you throw in a couple just make sure that when you kind of delete you're getting rid of the mass of it there we go so I have a couple leges here and you can either delete all that fuzz right there or it could be a little bit but it's a wet land and we in last week's stream we did Wetlands or swamps and it's Lakes are a great place where to put your Wetland and it could be just a part of it and General all right let's go over to our next one that's tectonic so just remember the certain parameters put them close to the mountains because hey that's where the plate tectonics is most visible so always a good place to put them you don't have to you could place them anywhere you want but near a mountain also makes it dramatic right you have these tall mountains and then a lake and it allows you to do things like overlap you'll notice right here that I have a mountain range right here that's overlapping that Lake giving it more more drama more depth okay so Lakes look nice and I usually put them at least the tectonic ones by my mountain ranges but you can put them anywhere that you like right let's go with the next one a glacier Lake and as you kind of guessed a glacier lake is usually found at the base of a glacier okay now glaciers can be found anywhere on Earth but when it comes to the ones that are furthest away from the ocean they're higher up in altitude so if you're not going to have your Glacier in a polar region you're going to have it somewhere in between your two temperate zones then I recommend that you have that Lake be up in the mountains because that is where glaciers take take take place as well it's up high up in the mountains where there's consistent snow consistent ice and frost okay but because it's so much easier to place it in a polar region because it is hard to to show a river or a lake in the mountains the scale probably wouldn't even work look at the size of those mountains so instead I recommend you just move it to the polar region where there is consistent snow but maybe close to the temperate zone where it can kind of thaw enough to create the glacial lake so polar region some overlapping into the temperate zone that's where you'll find your Glacier lakes and they're not too hard to put together again I've made the shape with the path tool and I'll just actually move it over to here like this let's go ahead into it and I'm going to move move this path right here over to here and this is where I'll have my my Glacier and last time what we used was the mask tool let's go use a texture instead and what I'll do is I'll just end up painting in whatever this color is right here so I've instead of using the mask effects I've just painted in my Shoreline that light color there I'm going to do the same thing for this Glacier for kind of a smooth transition it's set to the FG layer I'm just going to go and put it right in like this because those blue but those right there are going to be like a type of Mesa well actually I think they're Cs and what's really cool about those csts is that you can change the color to them and make them blue and they work great for glaciers or ice spikes or whatever it might be but all I kind of did was just take that texture and kind of added the same thing here it looks like I have to do a little bit more blending and I'll drop the opacity here there we go and there you have your your Glacier Lake just make the shape with the path tool and I used textures instead of using the mask tool and really that's up to you remember what defines whether you're going to use a texture a path or a The Mask tool is going to be your mask effects if you're not sure what I'm talking about my mask effects you'll find them here in advanced settings you can turn the mask effects on and off I've turned mine off because it can cause a little bit of lag especially when you're streaming so that's basically a glacier Lake not complex right just make sure that you have your glaciers which is just an icy Mountain really you can just look at it that way and remember the the easiest place to put them is going to be in between your polar and temperate zones but it's okay if you put them somewhere else just make sure they're up in the mountains or a place where they consistent snow and there's like thawing and melting okay so that's what's important there let's do next a desert lake now I'm sure you've heard of a desert lake by a different name it's actually called an oasis and Oasis generally get their water from underground Rivers which are called aquifers okay and they actually have an intimate relationship with rivers as well so if you do have an oasis somewhere it's okay to also have a river somewhere off in the distance because what happens is is that fault lines and then water forms and it kind of travels down and it kind of goes to where maybe there's a depression in the land so an oasis gets most of its water from underground okay obviously there can be some rainfall but it's usually not enough to accumulate to create a hole like this but you totally it can be involved in that and I just put a river down here to kind of show here I've used the SE ract mode of the Mask tool I'll go ahead and remove this and show you where to put it and I want to mention that more than likely you would not the size of the OAS of the Oasis probably wouldn't be that big and there's a specific reason for that it's because um again a Oasis is going to be you're the Lakes you're not going to see at this kind of scale and that's okay but you definitely want to show your Lakes especially if your players are going there so it's okay to go a little out of scale a little bit and if you're not sure on the shape you can use the texture itself as a guide I'll give you an example so I've used this sand texture here and you don't know what the shape that you want to make that's okay you can just use kind of the outlines I'll go ahead and change the width here a little bit there we go you can change um you can use the path to kind of use the negative space to kind of create the shape that you want so use that as a guide now that you've masked now that you've kind of added the shape you can go in with the subtract mode of the mass tool I've set it to one it's going to be small in fact we can go with two and I'll just kind of put in the subtract mode of the mass tool I'll go wherever the path is just stay within the path think of it as like operation right make sure the whole thing's filled in and then all you have to do is delete the path there you go there's your Oasis now one thing I recommend um is is that usually there's a lot of vegetation near an oasis because it's a water source and plants are going to cling to that water source so it doesn't hurt to take maybe a grass texture make sure it's set to the right layer I'm going set it to FG and I'm just going to go ahead and paint a little bit of green texture around the edges of it just so that I'm showing that hey there's some vegetation there and you know just because it's the desert it's nice to throw in a palm tree or two and I'll make set the palm tree down in a way where there's some overlap going on so I'll look for where the palm tree is in the catalog and this is where you have to think about scale if you want the palm tree to be more visible and you don't mind it being a little out of scale then scale it up if you prefer it to be much closer to scale then scale it down a lot more and you can use the mountain range as a guide right the mountains can help you with scal scale if a tree is this big and this is how big a mountain is you're going to say wait a second that's not right so scale it down now if you wanted to stick to a really accurate scale or very close to it a tree would probably be this big but because you want to actually see the stamp and you want to have some drama to it and you don't mind exaggerating this location a little bit then throw down a couple and I want to make sure they're overlapping so if you notice carefully these trees are are overlapping where that water is giving it a sense of depth okay so Oasis not hard to make and just use whatever sand texture use the negative space around it that is wherever the line work is taking you put a little bit of green around it and also because it's so much shallower and it's away um from kind of any kind of runoff from like a mud or anything like that you can use a more brighter kind of blue you can use a brighter blue if you want just make sure it's set to that BG layer and throw it on like you can say boost let's go to advanced settings go to color let's make it a lot brighter I'll just throw it on here there you go and this is a good time to mention how to show depth in your legs by the way if you want to show that your lake is shallow like the Oasis then you are going to want to use a lighter texture if you want to show depth in a body body of water you want to use a darker texture because it's harder for sunlight to get down to to deeper depths right it takes longer so of course it's going to be darker so when I apply that texture to it I want to make sure that I bring the size down and generally I'll just put it in the center to show depth so if I go like this and I'll put in a little bit in the center just to show depth and you can do that with any Lake just remember the deeper it is the darker it is that's how easy it is not too complex right all right let's talk let's do a couple more let's do a volcanic Lake and if you're not certain what a volcanic lake is we'll go with a specific one it's called a volcanic crater lake and basically what happens is is a volcano will blow off its top violently and then over time that volcano will become inactive and then it will fill with snow snow melt and rainwater and then that's what's referred to as a volcanic crater flame there's one in the state that I live in in the United States it's really cool and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to show you what it looks like first and then I'm going to show you how to make it because these making a mountain lake is super hard and there's a a method to it and I'll go ahead and move it off to the side and I'll break it all down for you on how I make Mountain Lakes or volcanic Lake if you wish so first let's start start with breaking down what is in this group you're going to choose a couple mountains to be in the foreground layer you make sure those are several layers up they're on Layer Two next I'm going to use the path tool I'm going to use hard light and I'm going to use the flat or solid line and I'm going to use whatever color blue that I want to use okay that's going to be a layer below whatever layer those mountains are at so if these are at Layer Two you're going to want to move them to layer one right and then these mountains are going to want to be a layer below that what we're doing is creating a little we're encasing that blue path with mountains so that it looks like I'm creating a crater right so and I've made the water a little see-through there using hard light and then there is your mountain right there so just think moving forward going back mountains in whatever Arrangement that you want in the front put that layer two three whatever path tool make the shape that you want then put that in a layer below the mountains right below the mountains in the front then you want to make another settings of mountains put them in the back you can do all kinds of things with it too you can make those mountains in the background a little bit darker if you want just to make it look like they're further in the distance it's entirely up to you be creative but that is how simple it is to kind of make a mountain or or volcanic Lake once you've kind of assembled that together then you can scale it to whatever size that you want and put it in the mountain ranges wherever you want so I'm going to copy and paste it open up my mountains paste it in and then I can place it kind of wherever I wherever I want it to be in the mountains okay so you can have it over here or you can have it be over here somewhere you can have it be over here just make sure that this group I would group it and label it whatever you want I would totally recommend that you absolutely set it to the same layer that your mountains are in so the mountains are set to one right and then your mountain lake is also group is also set to layer one this way you can go in like this and move it and put the lake wherever you want right because now it's been built and it's going to follow the specific layer order within the fantasy world style I'm going to go and put the lake here for now okay CU I just think it looks nice there so we'll put it there the other thing you can do to make a mountain lake or a crater L is to use an actual crater itself okay and this one what I recommend doing is scaling it up first so you can see it and then selecting that same path that you used before we're going to bring bring the path size down a little bit let's just make sure see how big it is first oh and it needs to be a layer above the crater don't forget let's bring the scale down a little bit okay and then we're going to go ahead and just fill it in and the way that this works is I wouldn't fill in the entire crater you want to show some depth so what I what you can do is just go like this put it closer to the center like this make sure you fill it all the way in all right now if you feel like there's too much to fill in just scale it all down a little bit okay oops that's an error there just scale it down a little bit that's all you have to do is just scale it down and then it'll be easier to fill up so I'll go ahead and place the shape there if you don't like the shape you can also rotate it and move it that's the beauty of using the path tool it's now you can now edit it now that that's done I you might want to select the crater and change the blend mode to normal or Luminosity so that that way it picks up whatever layer is beneath it and then of course you'll group create group I'm going to call it Crater Lake and then you can just move it anywhere that you want on the map okay so that's the other way to make a Crater Lake all right so super cool right not too complex super easy to make right I like it fun stuff so now you know that one all right there is one more left and that is an oxbow lake okay an oxbow lake is generally or actually it's always an old part of a river okay and what I really like about Oxbow Lakes is their shape it has the shape of like the bow that an ox would carry you know an Ox Bow so I'll go ahead and turn on it real quick and I'll show you where to kind of put everything how I put it together and whatnot so one of the first things is is you have to EST establish where the old River used to be and what I'll do is I'll take the path tool and I'll turn the path tool on oopsie let's go over here and show the oxbow lake make sure it's set to 100% And what I'll do is I'll actually make where the old River was using the path tool right so that's where the river is now for the oxbow lake make sure that there are very noticeable meanders a Meander is the curve of the lake okay the curvature of the lake if you're not sure oxbow lakes are created when the flow of a river is changed due to erosion over time and an old a river the old section of the river will dry up or and then it will create a depression and it will fill up with rainwater okay that's how an oxbow lake is formed so I'm going to use the mask tool for this I'm going to stick with a small shape and it's going to look look again much like an Ox Bow so here's the shape that I'm going to do right here and where the it gets that shape is because the Meandering part of it right so that's a deeper part and then it fills up with rainwater that's your oxbow lake so my suggestion is the best place to put an oxbow lake is not far from a river because likely the river that we see now is the river as it changed over time and the old part dried up and then created an oxbow lake really that's it not too complex just create the Old River shape then find a meander and then subtract mode or paint it or whatever you might decide to use the path tool whatever that's the beauty of Incarnate there's many different ways to make uh parts of your map and that's what's so cool about it there's not one way or a wrong way to go about doing it that's up to you right so super easy stuff that is Lakes so just kind of quick review make the shape with the path tool once you've figured out the location the shape that you want it you've rotated the path around use the subtract either the subtract mode of the mass tool assuming that the ad that your land is made with the add mode of the mass tool as it is in this map once you've done that you can also use the path tool or use the texture sure it's up to you you can remove the path because you don't need the shape anymore and then depending on what kind of Lake it is you can add your details to it whether it's Islands maybe there's a forest around a lake it's a great thing to do with a lake is to add a forest around it if it's an oasis throw in some palm trees okay if it's a bigger Lake a much bigger Lake throw in that Island right that can look really nice if it's a glacier Lake just remember to include some glaciers you know what I used I just used CS they're green and I just changed them to Blue to create my Glacier right there your Mountain Lake and your oxbow lake okay well hey that is it thank you so much everybody I hope you found this useful there are definitely more types of lakes than these but hey those are the ones that are going to I think are the most easiest to identify on a map so hey uh just a quick one quick announcement no stream next week h days are coming up so I'll be taking that stream off sorry about that but we'll kick right back to our normal schedule again starting next month next year actually next year and I am looking forward to that please let me know what kind of streams you want to see in the future what kind of content you want to see I'm all ears okay thank you so much for watching please stay safe and healthy merry Matt making and I'll see you all in a couple weeks Zan what

Channel: Inkarnate

Views: 1,487

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Id: 5wsOJ37W9Nw

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 14 2023