tutorial for shallow ponds?

[chasing.lucid]

Is there a good video tutorial on making shallow ponds? I spent a good hour trying to make a shallow (1m or less deep) and it would not let me fill it with water.

[Nioell]

Pretty sure it needs to be at least 1m deep so you can even fill it with water. Nothing you can do but keep trying with the terrain tools...make a hole and smooth it until you reach the point where you can't fill it anymore, undo the last step and add the water.

[Jaggid Edje]

I'm not familiar with any tutorial on this, but generally when you can't fill it it is because somewhere (or even everywhere) on the bank the terrain is slightly uneven and filling it would spill the water out over the whole landscape.
This happens because the water-fill level is not a gradient choice, it's a stepped choice (on like a 1m vertical grid) so if the terrain you carve the pool into already has parts that are just below one level of the grid while other parts are just above that level you end up with parts of the "bank" that are too low.

When using the water fill tool (or more aptly trying-to-use), it shows a red water-level-line where the water will want to go, so if you move the camera along the bank all the way around you should be able to see where it is wanting to spill out and just raise any sections showing spill-out by a little a bit.

The easiest way to prevent this is to to just ever so slightly raise the terrain of the area where you plan to carve out the pond and then level the whole area with flatten to foundation before you carve out the pond. Then this doesn't happen.

[Varick]

Chasing.lucid - While there are many ways to make ponds (a path with tunneling gives a flat bottom but does require smoothing), there is a way to make a very shallow pond round one that does not require smoothing. Set the terrain tool to 50% intensity and 4 size. Using curved construction grid pieces make a circular template. Place the template on ground and, looking at the ground from overhead,
put the push terrain in the middle. Click once for very shallow (move the middle circle around within the template clicking once each time) , more for deeper, then remove the template, no smoothing necessary if shallow and add water. Hope this helps. :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2474835057

[chasing.lucid]

Thanks, I'll try that.

[Phil]

trial and error. Don't eat yellow snow.