The best choice for water is the game the rendered water. This type of water needs a bank on all sides to contain it or else it floods part of the course. Besides that requirement, this water is pretty easy to use:
The table below lists some examples of water colors I use on my course designs.
| Type | Red | Green | Blue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural | 45 | 42 | 25 |
| Muddy | 72 | 65 | 34 |
| Dark | 32 | 31 | 9 |
| Ocean/Bay | 74 | 93 | 106 |
This water does not update automatically to reflect changes in the terrain. There is an option to "Update Water Shapes" when right clicking on the ball but I find this typically doesn't work. Instead, after working with terrain near the water, I always delete the existing ball representing the water and replace it with a new one. For this reason I try to hold off on setting color until after doing any terrain work needed near the water, including things like raising banks to prevent flooding, smoothing bank edges to improve their look, or simplifying terrain in out of play areas near water to improve performance.
There is an alternate option for creating rendered water in the height layer called "Add Water From Shape" but I recommend against using this. This creates a flat plane of water over the area of a shape drawn on the surface layer. Unfortunately the plane of water is rendered as a flat horizontal plane at the highest point of land covered by the shape. This results in water edges appearing in mid-air everywhere except at the highest point of the shape. You can lower the water level, but this just results in some of the water disappearing underground, while some of it still floats above ground. It is only useful if it is on a part of the course that the camera never gets near enough to see these defects.
Rendered water works great for lakes and ponds but poses a problem for rivers, streams, and creeks. It is still the preferred type and if the gradient is not too steep you can create flat sections similar to water locks. A barrier of land to separate the locks is required along with rocks or vegetation to hide these section breaks. This approach becomes impractical as the gradient increases and the width decreases. In these cases we need to create Water Texture Illusion.