Step 2: Create the water terrain

After you duplicate the river bed terrain, go back to Terrain Editor. The second button on the top of the elevation editor is "Invert." Click it. Your river bed terrain will have its values reversed so that the low bits are now the high bits and vice versa.

When you first invert the terrain, don't freak. There will be a hideous white box all around the area that was once black. Take your paint brush, set it to black and paint out all the unwanted white areas. The remaining center area will be your new water terrain.

The last thing I like to do is to lower terrain and add some faint erosion to it. The erosion gives some personality to the water and will help to mimic surface tension or waves (depending on the scale of your final image).

Click the check mark to return to your scene.

Once you have your first terrain, it helps to align the camera before things get too complicated. I like to keep the camera low to give a sort of "view from the boat."

The next step will be to select your newly created terrain and to duplicate it.