Sculpting - Valleys

Valleys are very easy to make. I will just briefly explain how to make one quickly. This technique works for rivers, mountain sides and of course valleys :D

1.  Click the Terrain Tab which will open the Terrain Editing Tools panel. Click the Sculpt tab. Click Mountain. Brush Parameters are Size, Strength, and Falloff which I have coded for this tutorial as S- size, O- strength and F- falloff.

2. Select Mountain and set brush to s-40 o-15 f-50 and Click-Drag gently up and down to create 2 little hills. You may also use the Hill brush for this.

3. Turn on Fog, if it's turned off (I usually work with it turned off for clarity)

4. Using the same brush settings, Select Valley Steep brush and create a river in between the hills

5. Using the same brush settings, Select Smooth brush and smooth out the Hill. Just do this once so that it not too smooth.

6. Using the Valley Steep brush, set it to s-10 o-8 f-50. Use this to create ridges. Use up and down strokes. try to keep the pattern random. Depending on what you want you can space the ridges closer or wider.

7. When have gone all around, you should have something like this below.

Here is a view with the Fog turned on. Valley complete.

8.Although this tutorial is not for Terrain painting, I shall explain a quick technique using the default terrain paints. Click the Terrain Tab which will open the Terrain Editing Tools panel. Click the Paint tab. Double click sand_dark_base.dds texture and set brush to s-40 o-5 f-50

Click and hold mouse and do one even coat all round the valley

Tip: to keep it even all through. Once you click, hold the mouse until you are done painting. If you let go just make sure you start from an un-touched spot to avoid too much over-lapping of paint

9. Next switch to sand_light_base.dds. Set brush to s-20 o-10 f-30. Use it to paint only the raised bits to highlight the ridges. Note that you can use the same terrain paint to achieve this effect.

Here's is a finished version. Darker paints might be preferable, but the technique is the same.

Here is a shot with the fog turned on. You can do another layer on the ridges to make them darker still.

And that's all there is to. I try to do things with as few steps as possible. But with this technique you can make more elaborate creations.

1. You can set your brush sizes to whatever you wish. Just be sure to keep you strength to about 10% of the brush size, and your falloff to about 50% of the brush size. It is all about proportion. Test and experiment and save the sets you like.

2. Your valley may be smooth or rough. Just adjust your Strength accordingly.

3. Depending on the Paint/Texture you are using, you may have to adjust your Strength as some paints are darker than others.

4. Always Brush up and down, not side to side as this follows the natural shape of the valley.

5. You may also use the mountain tool to create the ridges, depending on the effect you are going for.