I've experimented with swimmable ponds, with varying degrees of success. But, does anyone know of a wall paint (or wallpaper/mural) that could be applied to an actual swimming pool wall that, when viewed through the blue pool water, would look more like a naturally occurring swimmin' hole? I guess something suitable for the floor would be good, too, although that seems to be easier to color nicely, for some reason. I know there are animated fish, and I can plant cattails and whatnot around the edge and cover the water with lily pads, etc. But there's just something about that water color. I'm assuming there's probably a way to change the color of the water itself, (without using overlays) but I can't recall seeing one specifically. Don't get me wrong - I love the overlays, for some situations. I just have a hard time getting them to meet correctly without overlapping or leaving gaps, for larger pools... a nice wall/floor combo would be a much simpler, more elegant solution, I feel.

maybe this mud wall covering
https://www.thesimsresource.com/dow...wall/id/417081/

Looks promising; you can never really tell, though, with pools, how it's going to look underneath the blue water. I'll give it a shot; thanks!

Maybe colored pool lights in addition to walls and floors? I've made some, they come in the colors of the NL neons. If you combine colors they do merge, like red and blue do give off purple.

I think seasons added some dirt/grass floors right? Some other more mm styles of flooring.

https://modthesims.info/d/302204/ma...e-flooring.html
https://modthesims.info/download.php?t=603202

I tried various things... the problem, as I see it, is the pool water itself... the Maxis folks went a little overboard in their water-tinting efforts. IRL, water is clear. From the air, water bodies reflect the blue sky... or the gray sky, if it's cloudy. Unmodded Sims pool water doesn't even do that. As a kid I enjoyed looking through my grandpa's camera lens filters, but I noticed that mixing light doesn't necessarily work the same way as, say, mixing paint... and I think that's sort of the issue here: the ultramarine filter of the Maxis water messes everything up. As you can see in the screenshot, things which look like they might work pretty well on the surface - like garden-soil tiles - are mostly turned a funny shade of purple under the water... except for the green wall paint (at right), which just becomes darker blue [shrug].

CycloneSue's brown clay wallpaper (arrow) suffers the same fate. In an empty pool, it'd be great, and I'll probably use it somewhere as regular wall paint. But that blue water... I thought that maybe a dark orange would counteract the blue (makes sense on a color wheel), so I tried the orange-ish ripple pattern Maxis cement for the floor, which became... is that puce? I dunno, I'll probably just end up going with the green and brown overlays - which also have a nice opacity, like muddy pond water - and hide the seams with deco plants and whatnot.

BTW - HL, in my modern hoods I definitely do use your neon pool lights, which are way better than the standard ones. Here though, I'm trying to make a swimming pool that doesn't look like one, for historic purposes. The swimmable ponds work okay, but once in a while the animations get weird, and for a community lot with potentially a whole bunch of swimmers, I was hoping to cut down on weirdness as much as possible.

Maybe these pool wall overlays could be the thing?

https://i.postimg.cc/QxR0pGFc/LFB-c...Shot365-red.png

A long while ago I downloaded a lot at all4sims that had a pool the lot creator had converted into a pond of sorts. I've always liked that one. It came with some rocky sides that covered up the pool walls, plus lots of greenery. The lot was called "Asylis cottage". I think the files are the ones named "wfs2wwpool..." from WoodForSims (pool wall cover, ladder, diving board + a few other things). It gives the walls more of a structure, so they don't look so flat. Better than just a wallpaper.

Looks to be part of this set: http://paysites.mustbedestroyed.org...ims/fishermans/

As for how the pool shows up for you - I've been used versions of Gunmod's (and dreadpirate's) lighting hacks that also add some fixes to pools and such, and the Pools in my game reflect everything, not just the sky. I think there are older versions of Gunmod's mod available.

The water is how it used to show up on my old computer, close to how it's on my new one (if using slightly different mods) - there's more reflections than what's actually showing in the pic, but for some reason they weren't showing here. Water needs shaders turned on + reflections turned on, at the minimum, plus some tweaking via mods if you want it to really shine. Yours looks like there's maybe just reflection, or just shadows showing? I don't know if reflections in the pool will properly show without shaders. Without shaders you'll get the extreme blue water). An unmodded pool should still get alright reflections and decent shaders.
(Scroll down to "shaders" for pics of pool with unmodified shaders --> https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?ti...aps_and_Shaders )

On my first laptop I couldn't use shaders (barely knew it existed), and reflections slowed down the poor thing, so I had both turned off. The pool water looked similar to what's shown in your pictures - very blue water and no reflections.
Pic, in case you want to compare: https://i.postimg.cc/KcDDc6SQ/LFBha...Shot015-red.png

[QUOTE=simmer22]I've been used versions of Gunmod's (and dreadpirate's) lighting hacks that also add some fixes to pools and such, and the Pools in my game reflect everything, not just the sky. I think there are older versions of Gunmod's mod available. QUOTE]

I'll have to look for those lighting mods! And as for the fisherman set, the ladders alone are worth the download. In my Roman hood, some of the indoor pools have fancier stone walls & floors (although, most of them were probably lined with cement in reality). I have a wealthy stone quarry owner who decorates his home - in a gauche, new-money way that the patrician types probably snicker at - with all manner of stone types from his various sources in the provinces. His shop "lobby" is a rainbow of marble colors, a sort of Roman-era "Floor & Decor" sample display.

If I re-imagined the community swimming hole in question as, maybe a limestone and gravel creekbed (this is supposed to be a neighborhood near the Mississippi River, so maybe... hmmm. You've given me something to think about. I wonder if there are short waterfall objects that could be set up at one end of the pool, to give the illusion of something like that. I think I have a photo of a real place somewhere on my laptop...

These are the falls on West Panther Creek, in southwestern Illinois, where legend has it that a group of children on the run from an enemy war party were saved by a host of small, invisible people who came out from a cave behind the waterfall. Anyhow, prior to the incident, their grandmas have stopped at the waterfall for a breather before continuing on, and the kids go splashing around in the pool. So maybe there's some way to construct something similar.
This is the thing I live for in Sims 2 - figuring out how to do wacky stuff!

Waterfalls:
https://modthesims.info/d/237912/th...all-update.html
https://modthesims.info/d/647734/in...waterfalls.html
https://modthesims.info/d/275659/wa...of-rocks-d.html (shower)
(I've seen various edits and recolors of these, too).

I think the lot I mentioned used one or two of these, along with various plants and rocks, to mask the corners of the pool walls. I think Woodforsims also has a set of mangrove trees (the ones with long roots going down into water). They can help a bit with the pond/river feel.