Modeling Cliches to Avoid when Building your Layout

[nachoman]

A small "island" in a stream:[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

Sumpter, I will use your photo as an example. First of all, this stream is modeled better than most. There are a few things that could have been done better, and I will get to those in a moment.

Dusting some cobwebs out of my brain - I can tell you a few things about that stream. First of all, it is not a meandering stream. I know this because the bedload is too coarse. The beds of meandering streams are not littered with rounded cobbles (there is physics behind this reason). It is also not a braided stream, because braided streams generally are very wide and shallow, with coarse bedloads and channels that may drastically shift position seasonally, or even continually. Because braided streams are so dynamic, the banks are almost completely unvegetated, and the island would be basically a pile of rounded cobbles and gravel - ready to be moved downstream in the next flood.

The trees along the bank and on the island suggest a stable channel for at least as long as the trees are old. And the coarse bedload suggests a more dynamic channel. If I was to see this stream in nature, I would either say there is a dam upstream controlling the flow, or that the banks and island are somewhat stabilized by bedrock beneath the surface. The floodplain is not very wide, and the annual flood stage is not very high. This either indicates human control (a dam) or that the stream does not experience very high seasonal floods. Assuming it is not dam-controlled, i would assume the watershed does not see much winter snowpack or springtime flooding.

There is really only one thing about the scene that I can think of that detracts from the overall realism of the stream. The rocks on the bed and the banks are too uniform in size, and too evenly distributed. Streams typically have a bar and channel morphology, and a range of bedload sizes. Even a moderate flood would organize and sort the cobbles into bars and channels. Again, the scene suggests a dam upstream, because it appears as if the channel is lacking in fine bedload components (sand and finer).