Generate river systems in Gaea!
Today we’re going to quickly go over how to add river systems to your terrain in Gaea.
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The rivers node can instantly generate complex river networks on any terrain. Generating rivers does not require many pre-requisites. The terrain should just have some slopes, so rivers can flow downslope. This makes Rivers very versatile as you can use it with virtually any terrain shape and at almost any stage of your terrain's production.
By providing a headwaters mask, you can confine all starting headwaters inside that mask. All rivers would then originate from those locations, giving you artistic control over river generation while leaving the minute details to the algorithm.
You can even use Rivers early in your graph to help carve pathways and valleys for ancient rivers that have dried up, or for river generation later in the graph. Having a River early in the graph helps the Erosion other effects take the river pathway into account throughout the terrain production.
