A quick question for the Vue experts. I have made a USGS DEM model for Crater Lake in Oregon, and I want to fill the crater part only with water without having to raise the global water level around, how can I do this? The elevations on the DEM I made range from 950-2700m with the water level in Crater Lake at about 1820m I think. I have two versions of the DEM, one with the bathymetry in the lake and the other with constant values for the water level in the lake. Any advice about this will be appreciated, thanks. Lester

WEll, a quick and dirty way is the following... Get a plane and apply a water texture... Another that is a little more work, but you get water depth effects is get a cube and apply a water plane... Then just bury the cube or the water plane so just the parts you want are exposed...

I tend to find that a good way to get a more exacting fit is to copy the terrain for the crater again, invert it in the terrain editor, 'slice off' the top using the altitude tool, and either clip or dig out the extra stuff you don't need. More work, granted, but if your crater or whatever has thin walls or an irregular shape that won't allow you to use a plane or cube, then it has the desired effect.

If I well understand your message (I'm french...) your problem is easy to solve. Let's resume : you have a DEM file where the lake is not taken into account as datum of height, and the other one where the lake is taken into account. (I hope it is correct english, or at least understandable... :-)) It I'm right, and if both files coincide well , take the one with the lake, apply on it the water materiel you want, and make it coincide with the other one. Then, lower it slightly so that only the lake is visible... I hope that can help you...

Thanks for the ideas. I tried doing multiple planes for the water to get a good fit around the edge of Crater Lake, and then grouped all the planes. Applied the water texture to the grouped planes and it looked fine, just like a single continuous surface. Seems to be a quick way to do it. It's fine for simple surface views of a lake. Not sure I understand how to do the method quoted by Jaywat. If I had two DEM's of the same dimensions and resolution, then the idea of Bop would work fine too. It's all experimentation and eventually solutions come up! It would be simpler if there was an option to do a polygon shape for the plane! If there are other ideas on this matter I'd be interested to hear of them. Lester

Thanks for the illustrated how-to, Nir. And that is a really nice scene you worked with! :)