Surveyor:Terrain Modification Tool

Creating a river bed using the terrain mod tools will drive you nuts. Lay a road spline following the course of the river, lower it by a meter or two and use just one click of the 'smooth spline' tool to lower the riverbed with reasonably rounded edges. Not perfect, but tweaking any 'sharp corners' will still go faster than doing the whole thing by hand...

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schweitzerdude said:

As discussed above, using splines to create a canyon or river valley is a useful technique. But there are other uses as well. If you have a slope in a urban area that needs to be graded to a even slope, lay a few road or rail splines from the top to the bottom and use smooth spline, and you can get a smooth slope without having to use any of the terrain tools.

Also, I built a ski resort on a route and to get a somewhat realistic consistent gradient for each ski run, I used rail splines (instead of road splines) because rail splines allow you to set the gradient. Smooth the splines, move the spline points slightly, then smooth again. The result is a realistically wide ski run with a slope that can be beginner, intermediate, or advanced. In that case, I used invisible track which I left in place so I could see in surveyor where my ski trails were.

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