I've gotten to the point where I am comfortable sculpting terrain to how I want it along with adding different paint layers to show dry/wet areas. However, while playing around with the instance painter to add in water, I have been unable to figure out the best way to implement it without causing issues from different elevations.

I have tried two different methods and both seem to be riddled with issues when trying to work with water planes.

Method 1: Add in the water planes to a terraformed map after watching a video by Dima Mozalevskiy(video: https://youtu.be/KFr1eVzvDeA )

Before: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317162246398803968/366003400418263050/unknown.png

After:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317162246398803968/367022249976397844/unknown.png

Issue: Because of the elevation changes as well as painting over new layers of water, the end result in-game looks bad when I thought they would overlap seamlessly.

Method 2: Start with a flat-plane, add my terrain paint and water planes, and then elevate the map.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/317162246398803968/367022343471628289/unknown.png

This seems to be the best solution thus far, but I was wondering if there was an easier method. (The green area was the result when I was trying to paint the area with a third paint.)