This is a much smaller alternative to that horrible big microscope thing. It consists of a lab workstation containing a small normal type of microscope, plus a lab chair. It has a 3-tile footprint, as opposed to the default monstrosity's 10 tile footprint. It's found in the Activities/Knowledge section in Buy Mode, where the default one is, and costs 500 simoleons.

It comes in 5 colour schemes as below. Top: Red and Beige, Black and Turquoise, Grey and Black. Bottom: Blue and White, and a Hot Pink scheme for your more flamboyant scientists.



Animation issues: This item works exactly the same as the default microscope, just with a different mesh. It re-uses the default animations - I don't know how to change them, or if it would ever be possible to do so, so I had to build this item around the default animations and seating position the best I could. It was hard to think of what to do with the sim's hands dangling in the air with their fingers curled, alternating with keying things in on a keypad, and what I did was to add a couple of small 'display consoles' with 'keypads', so that it could it look like the sims are keying stuff into them and checking the displays against what they're seeing on the slide. I then put a bunch of office or lab-type clutter on the workbench to further distract the eye from the sim's weird hand movements. So if you're not watching too closely, it can look from afar like they're keying things into the consoles and turning the microscope's focus knob.

Also, please note that the sims will look very strange as they enter and exit the chair. To get on the chair, they hurl themselves towards it with their legs sticking out behind them at a humanly impossible angle, and when they leave the chair, they shoot across the room backwards. It's actually pretty funny.

How to place: The workstation needs an extra half-tile kept clear at the back of the footprint and at the left side of the back, as depicted by the red arrows in the left-hand screenie of the below pic. This is because the sim needs the extra space to perform the default enter and exit animations. Otherwise, they will wave their little hands and stamp their little feet. (Please note that I also couldn't get the front of the desk closer to the wall due to the footprint not cooperating whatever I tried - I got it as close as I could.) If putting more than one workstation in a room, the right-hand pic below gives an example of how a row of them can be laid out to make them all accessible.



I'm enjoying using it and it looks cute and colourful in use, as long as you don't look closely at the wonky animations:





Thanks for looking, hope you'll find you get on all right with this object despite the less than ideal animations.


INSTALLATION:
Unzip the zip file and move the .package file to your Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Mods folder.


Polygon Counts:
2316 polys

Additional Credits:
Made with Sims 4 Studio, Milkshape and Blender.

Microscope meshed by me, workbench and chair modified from base game items.

Desk clutter converted from TS3.