Braided river, streams ?

gnoop · Nov 28 2025

Does anyone knows a terrain tools or just a simple way to generate them ? Looking physically accurate more or less? So far whatever terrain generator I tried , Gaea and such are only capable to do roots like looking errosion while I need more like a dried river bad with intertwined streams.

Generative AI seems useless for the task. SDesigner I used before for this still looks like hand maid, fancy of a sort . You instantly feel an artificial nature , not true physics driven. I ended up just drawing it by hand before feeding it to Designer for slope blur but wonder is there a true way by simulation somewhere? I see lots of nice braided things in movies for example. How do they do it?

Eric Chadwick · Nov 28 2025

Unreal makes it pretty easy
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/water-body-actors-in-unreal-engine

I've manually created lava streams that branch and reconnect, just using extruded splines, one for each branch. Then welding the sides together where they meet side-by-side to make the main stream. The UVs are in strips, and I adjusted the UVs so they're side--by-side seamless where the branches join together. Then it's just vertex colors to blend the textures together.

gnoop · Nov 28 2025

Thanks for the idea Eric Chadwick. But I meant something more like this

Image: https://pages.uoregon.edu/millerm/Dep-29.jpeg

But already dried out , without water. A desert version.

Google suggests Delft3d open source software you have to compile on your own. Anyone tried what it is? I am tired of trying to make SDesigner do it believably. Ironically I used some ancient Geocontrol soft , a predecessor of world creator . They have some "river" tool that did something like that after long voodoo and dancing around it. Can't even make it work now.

https://www.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/videos/3926639295/preview/stock-footage-aerial-view-of-braided-river-and-mountains-in-summer-in-iceland-hyperlapse.webm

a better example probably but i need it in smaller scale . I am alredy wasted days trying to both Designer and vector soft to draw curves manually and feel it might took me a month more to have something procedural for easy variations .

Eric Chadwick · Nov 28 2025

Ah. Sounds like a job for Houdini, e.g. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/GoVK1

gnoop · Nov 29 2025

Thanks Eric

Eric Chadwick · Nov 29 2025

World Machine has a river device, with floodplain and meander controls.
https://help.world-machine.com/topic/device-river/

Those two words could also help with your searches: floodplain, meander.

gnoop · Nov 29 2025

cool, thanks Eric . Now I need to find my ancient world machine license . Is it something new and fresh or been there all the time? I recall some river tool there but don't remember it could do braids .

found one more cool picture : Braided River Reflection - Seeds

ps A best way to do it is probably a long bendy sobol brush over a polished , oil smeared canvas . But it would takes hours for every new variation . Does anyone know an AI that could draw it believably without fancy looking random weird zig-zagz?

I recall the times when we used white plastic sheets and coffee splashes as well as real brush painting to make texture masks . Those old days . It's all now so much long forgotten. Does anyone have an idea how to do it quickly old "real thing" way on a plastic sheet? Some mix of oil and watercolor + ox gall maybe ?

Klunk · Nov 30 2025

isn't it just a scrawny stretched out 3d tree projected onto a 2d plane ?

Eric Chadwick · Nov 30 2025

Yeah maybe just a bunch of splines, with a different noise seed each, and various thicknesses.

Turn that into a texture, and use it to control the placement of rocks and sticks.

gnoop · Nov 30 2025

Yeah, maybe . I am trying to use geometry nodes to make something procedural . The issue is you instantly see it's not true since real thing is driven by some hydrodynamic forces , deeper down where the stream is speedier , branching not by just random places . IMO you instantly feel it subconsciously when you look to real thing vs that 2d tree projection or bending just by random point shift .

Eric Chadwick · Nov 30 2025

Yeah I guess it would need a bit of finesse, regardless. But here's a quickie with 3ds Max, changing the Seed on the Noise modifier.

Benjammin · Nov 30 2025

gnoop said:

Yeah, maybe . I am trying to use geometry nodes to make something procedural . The issue is you instantly see it's not true since real thing is driven by some hydrodynamic forces , deeper down where the stream is speedier , branching not by just random places . IMO you instantly feel it subconsciously when you look to real thing vs that 2d tree projection or bending just by random point shift .

Seems like you might need a system that feeds back into and deforms the landscape so your random branching feels deterministic?

gnoop · Dec 2 2025

Eric Chadwick said:

Yeah I guess it would need a bit of finesse, regardless. But here's a quickie with 3ds Max, changing the Seed on the Noise modifier.

That looks nice indeed and I did something like that in Blender Geometry nodes too by roughly same stack but isn't it instantly obvious the thing is not real and have a typical "procedural" taste just because a half of child streams are crossing each other and not do typical flow in before a bend and out after , a core character feature of real braided streams. Besides it represents only river surface and I need a depth map for dried stream , sort of desert version. something like this but with more pronounced main/central stream:

Image: https://scontent.fdxb2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/485766264_1204584281336727_933535886294954644_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640_tt6&_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=WONTN98oXlQQ7kNvwE3xt94&_nc_oc=AdmIyjR9YzZa2p7YF6qZaO_sZgTd6ioLH_1cwMqHi3IzLGLMtiF8FD5utJxmJGo6LVM&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent.fdxb2-1.fna&_nc_gid=IR9alR09JhjtdsM8FVJ6sA&oh=00_AfnMP5TRnmUj8Oxc8l0h0dKpLveOfRMgJA9_wkxfAdCuIQ&oe=6934EDA8

Notice , there is no child stream just crossing each other and a lots of depth variety in specific places . When a stray stream is back in the depth is pretty shallow etc. It's not really that simple as just a random noise shift IMO. Should be a simulation probably.

Eric Chadwick · Dec 2 2025

Hmm. One thing you could try is making a flat slope, displacing it with noise, then tell World Machine (or whatever fluid solver) to send water down it. Should end up with something similar.

gnoop · Dec 2 2025

I tried Gaea , It only makes root like branches , never intertwined . I think world machine does the same.

Noren · Dec 3 2025

Have you tried letting it run from opposite directions (one after the other) or maybe overlay two displacements? In a min/max way. The pattern in some of your references doesn't look overly dependent on being up- or downstream, so if you find some settings with less branching, you could mix two central ones for the main pattern and a broader one for some tributaries to get better angles for those.

Braided river, streams ?

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