Switching upstream end on child river reaches not possible?

Bug Reports
#1

Hey, Im trying to draw some branching rivers using the river node. When I snap a river to another, I noticed that the option to switch the upstream end of the stream disappears from the right click menu. Unfortunately, the direction of the river also changes to face the incorrect way sometimes. Seems like a bug! Am I missing something? is there any documentation about how drawing these rivers is supposed to work? thanks!

I attached an image showing the issue. the lower long river was snapped to the upper long river and its direction reversed. its no longer switchable.

Im using the latest dev channel release 3025 Alpine Lakes.

#2

Hmmm. It seems like its only supported to connect rivers coming from upstream, not splitting rivers downstream. That seems like a somewhat arbitrary limitation… Is that by design for some reason? Can we get the ability to do either? That would enhance the direct-ability of these rivers greatly.

#3

Hi Matt,

Just to copy our helpdesk conversation here for others’ use:

When you connect a child river to a parent, the child river is forced to flow into the parent as a tributary. This is usually what you want; a tributary flows into its parent. Since that relationship is forced, the option to flip the river direction is removed.

While the opposite sometimes does exist in real life (so called ‘distributaries’), it is relatively rare and occurs mostly near river deltas, etc, where flow splits apart. The manual river system supports only tributaries at present.

#4

Thanks for the clarification. Heres hoping for support of distributary connections at some point in the future!