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| Building Great Realistic Houses - From the Ground Up: Main Page | Introduction and general info on getting started with your house. |
|---|---|
| Exterior | Building the shell of your house, roofs, windows, and landscaping. |
| Interior | Room sizing and layout, decorating, furnishing, and all the fun details. |
Contents |
Foundations & House Shape
The shell of your house is its whole basis, and if it isn't right your entire house will suffer overall. If you are new to building, you will need to know about foundations and how they work and can be placed. If you're already experienced with foundations, you can skip ahead to the "Box or Not?" section.
Foundations
Proper use of foundations can really improve your house: they can add detail, allow you to have basements and cellars, and they can be quite attractive too. But, they are not without their issues...
Building foundations is the same in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3. You should use the basic brick foundation for the main base of the house. The other types of foundations (TS2's interior foundations and both the lattice ones from both games) are for special applications such as porch areas, but should not usually be the main base for your house.
Foundations on Even Terrain
Foundations on Uneven Terrain
This type of foundation placement means that your stairs down from the foundation will not be the standard four-step height. When placing stairs to the ground, it may automatically lower or lift the terrain at the slightly so the stairs fit in properly without leaving a half step at the bottom. If you prefer to control the exact height yourself, you can... First, place the stairs and allow the game to adjust the terrain. Then, use the cheat constrainFloorElevation false (for Sims 3) or boolProp constrainFloorElevation false (for Sims 2) and then flatten the terrain at the bottom of the steps. The terrain will snap up around the steps and will leave you with a half step at the bottom. Remember to always turn the cheat off afterwards by repeating the cheat and changing "false" to "true."
Basements
To create a basement, first design your foundation before starting on the basement.
You'll need to have the foundation tool selected. Hold down the ctrl key and delete the center of your foundation so that there is only ONE tile of foundation left as a border, all around the edge of your house. This open area is going to be your basement, but first you'll need to dig down to make it a full level depth.
Go to the modular stairs tool and place one set of stairs. Then at the bottom of the first set of stairs, place another set going further down, and at the bottom of the second set, place a third set. This bottom tile is the proper depth for your basement.
Delete the 3 sets of stairs and then use the level tool to level out the bottom of the basement so that it is flat. Now you can add stairs from the foundation above to the basement level, you can add walls and floors and furniture like a normal room, and texture the walls however you like. The only limit is that you cannot put any windows or doors in the basement (though there are ways around that for more advanced builders).
The picture to the right shows a foundation with the stairs leading down to it from the foundation above. this is what you should aim to have when you have finished.
Building Without Foundations
Building without using foundations is even easier than with foundations, and requires little explanation. You simply use the wall tool and begin putting the walls in whereever you like, in a flat area.
Houses without foundations can be less expensive as you don't have to purchase foundations and stairs to connect to them, but you also can't have a basement (unless you do a true TS2 sunken basement, but that's extremely advanced building). They can also be a little easier to play when it comes to switching levels, but they may not look as nice. Let the style of the house and what you want it to end up like be your guide, whether you use foundations or not.
Box or Not?
SO many people have problems with building box houses! A big fat box is not an attractive house in the real world, or in TS2/TS3!
Single Story Buildings
To make an interesting single-story home, use small extensions to the structure. Start with a basic box (yes, a box, but it's just a building block, not the final structure). Then put a small extension of about 3x4 tiles, and then choose another side and add another - doesn't have to be the same size, or symmetrical in any way, and you can do it with diagonal edges, like a bay window. Several additions like this on the house will give it a lot more depth than a rectangular bungalow with just a bay window.
Again, you can use boxes as building blocks to make an overall non-boxy house. For example, begin with your living room as a box, then add another box somewhere else for the dining room, and another box for the kitchen, varying the sizes and the way they match up, using diagonal walls here and there, and so on, so that when you have placed all the rooms you get a much more interesting look.
Multi Story Buildings
For a bit more interest, you can build "dummy rooms". These are rooms that look real but aren't. If you look at the picture to your right you will see an example of dummy roofs on the third floor. Those 2 rooms are in no way useable and are just there for effect; this works really well if you want to give the illusion of more space without much cost.
When building upper floors, don't just copy the lowest floor! Upstairs and downstairs the same shape looks looks really dull, no matter how interesting downstairs was. You can either leave spaces to place roofs (see picture to right: second floor on the left), or you can put a balcony to break it up (see picture to right: second floor on the right). These two techniques make the house more interesting and less rigid; a rigid house is a boring house. Of course, you don't have to go nuts and make a completely strange shaped building, but make sure there is variation and interest in the shape of your house!
Windows, Doors, Stairs & Arches
Windows and doors are magical objects. They allow you to see and pass through walls!
Disable Cheats
Make sure to turn off the moveObjects and snapObjectsToGrid cheats when placing build items like windows and doors - both cheats make it difficult or impossible to place items properly.
Windows
Style
Always put care and thought into choosing the a correct and appropriate style of windows based on the style of the house - you wouldn't want shiny full-length ultra-modern windows on a classical grand Victorian house. Make sure your styles don't clash. Do a little research into building styles to see what general types of windows are used in that style or era. This same principal applies to all styles of houses, even if you are making something totally on your own, never seen before - the look and feel of the windows you use should match the look and feel of the house as a whole.
Type
This is probably the most important aspect of using windows - many builders make poor decisions when it comes to which type to use where. The style of the house can impact what types of windows you'd want to use overall - a modern beach house would tend to have larger windows than a Tudor-inspired house in the suburbs. Keep in mind the room type too - bedrooms, bathrooms, etc., should have windows sized and placed such that sims have a bit of privacy - you probably don't want a bathroom with full-length uncovered windows on the ground floor facing the street!
- Kitchens: Single or double-tile medium-sized windows in empty stretches of wall. Counter-height windows over counters. Don't use full length windows on sections of wall with counters on them!
- Living Room: Medium to large, half-height or full length, depending on the style of the house.
- Bathroom: Privacy or half-height medium windows with drapes. Second story bathrooms can have larger windows - just be aware of the placement and privacy.
- Bedroom/Dining Room/Office: Any, as long as it's appropriate to the house as a whole.
Placement
Not only do windows impact the environment scores on the inside of the house for the sims, but they also impact the players' or downloaders' perception of the house.
From the interior, it may look good to have two windows in the nursery, but looking at the house from the exterior, two windows on that section of wall might look strange. Builders often either leave large sections of wall without, or add in far too many - either way looks weird. You also can't just place them anywhere - there needs to be a balance and flow to it that goes with the rest of the house. Avoid strange window placement by placing the windows on the exterior before you build the interior rooms, so you can make sure that the outside is aesthetically pleasing as well as the inside.
Take a look at some real life houses or house plans to see what realistic window placement looks like, and try to build accordingly.
Doors
Style
This is the obvious one, of course - choose doors that fit the style of your home. Medieval doors on a modern house look just plain silly and makes it seem like you didn't care very much about your house. Generally, the nicest and biggest door of your house goes out front.
When choosing your front door, it should not only fit the style, but also match in color. Don't use a sliding glass door as your front door unless you've got a very good reason, and make sure you use a door that's appropriate to an exterior - interior doors are usually simpler looking. Take the time to find something that really matches your house.
You may have to rework the entrance a little bit for symmetry - if you had a 2-tile front door planned and your entry is 3 tiles, it's probably going to look a bit odd unless you put some extra effort into laying out the porch properly.
Placement
If you have a poorly placed door, it might not work, will look ugly, or even silly. Doors with glass in them are generally meant as exterior doors (sliding glass doors, glass pane doors, or stained glass doors), not leading into another room of the house. In TS3, there has to be a full tile between a door and an object parallel to it. In TS2, it isn't necessary to have a full tile - you can have them lining a single tile corridor - but that is also something to avoid that is covered in the Interiors part of this tutorial.
Arches
Arches are the best of both worlds. They are acceptable inside and outside, can lead to (most) rooms, and have a decorative and beautiful property. Since these wonders are basically doors, all of the same principals apply, except for placement.
Placement
Arches can be more versatile in regards to placement than doors. They can be placed anywhere inside or outside with the exception of being the way to enter a bedroom or bathroom. You can use them inside of bedrooms and bathrooms as architectural features (for example, into a room-within-a-room to contain a hot tub in a lavish bathroom), just not as as the main point of entry. There are doors into bedrooms for a reason.
Roofing
Don't be lazy and use the auto-roofs! Lazy does not lead to nice houses! While it's nice to have the ability and convenience to click and have a roof pop up, the auto-roof tool usually does a terrible job! While you may be an auto-roof addict, it's worth improving your skills and building your own. By trying to make your own roof, you not only get better with each attempt, you also get a better roof 100% of the time.
Know Your Roofs!
First handy thing to know is which roof does what. This should help a bit!
- Hipped - Not paintable, Rectangular base, Forms pyramid
- Gabled - Two paintable sides, Rectangular base, forms triangular prism
- Mansard - Not paintable, Rectangualr base, goes up one level before flattening out [not affected by roof angle adjusters]
- Half Hip - One paintable side, Rectangular base, Hipped roof cut in half
- Half Gable - Three paintable sides, Rectangular base, Gabled roof cut in half
- Dome - Not paintable, Hemispherical base, Does not get removed by roofs above it
- Conical - Not paintable, Hemispherical base, Does not get removed by roofs above it
- Octagonal - Not paintable, Octangonal base, Does not get removed by roofs above it
- Hipped Pagoda - Not paintable, Rectangular base, TS2 ONLY
- Gabled Pagoda - Two sides paintable, Rectangular base, TS2 ONLY
Lots of roof types! Each has their own benefit and look best when combined with other roof styles.
That is another downside to auto-roof - it places all of the same kind of roof over the whole house. It looks repetitive, icky, awkward, impersonal, and lack-luster. Sometimes autoroof CAN do a nice roof (usually on super simple small houses), but it is still recommended to be avoided, as this happens very rarely.
Something else to take into consideration is the adjustment of roof height. As you can see to the right image, all of those roofs were rendered with the same roof height and the autoroof button. Some of them might not have looked as bad if their slopes were adjusted. If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff for TS2 or TS3, then you are lucky enough to have the sliders. Nightlife introduced the "roofSlopeAngle [15-75]" cheat and Seasons brought with it "individualRoofSlopeAngle [15-75]" making for more intricate, and much nicer, roofs.
Techniques to Break Up a Big Roof
If your roof is over two stories high, it is either a pyramid or a bad roof (or both). Even if you're stuck with just the base game of TS2 and its limited roof options, there are ways to break up that roof of yours and make it look like it isn't so tall.
- Adding Levels - You can add a level on to your house. This will require you to have 2 floors with a roof on it, breaking a large roof into sections, and probably making it look better, with the final product varying based on how you build your second floor.
- Dormers - One of the easiest things to do is add in a dormer! If you have TS2, there is a section for it, if you have TS3, you are stuck making your own. For both games, making your own can lead to cooler effects, so give it a try if your house style is traditional enough for dormers. Just go up a floor, make a rectangular room that you can see outside of the roof, then put a roof on top of that. The additional interest of a dormer can really add a lot to an otherwise boring blobby roof.
- Different House Base - If your house is so square and simple that it forces you to have a roof over 2 stories tall, then you've got more problems than fiddling with roofs can solve, and you'll need to rebuild or modify your house so that you can put a nicer roof on it.
Driveways & Garages
Driveways
Driveways can have a garage, or not, or even a carport. Here are some specific examples.
Normal Driveways
Normal driveways are just, as they sound: normal straight driveways. You can use this dirveway for most houses - small houses, family homes, and certain bigger houses. However, for large houses and mansions, you can use a fancier ring driveway for effect.
With this driveway, you simple place 1-2 sets of driveway pieces or car placements pieces (depending on TS2 or TS3) and then you can decide to add on a garage at the end or not.
Don't plop a driveway down directly at the front of your house unless the garage is built into the house, which only really happens in a semi detached home. You should always place them to the side of the house - they can touch the house, that is fine, but DON'T put them in the middle, or for that matter, at a completely random spot around the lot.
Ring Driveways
Ring driveways are used for very big houses and mansions. They don't function properly for TS2, so if you're building in TS2 and you want this driveway for the look of it, that's fine, but for functionality, a normal driveway is better. In TS3, this type of driveway is completely functional because you are using the car placement object which can be rotated to any angle.
There are 2 main types of ring drive:
- Beginning 1 car wide, then splitting in the middle to form a circle then come back to 1 car wide at the top. This does not always look good and takes up a lot of room so you might not have space for it.
- More of just a simple circle - a 1 car wide drive going straight, then at an angle, then parallel to the road, mirrored on the other side to form an arc. This can be a better, more graceful option. See the image at the right to see how this looks.
Garages and Car Ports
Garages don't have to be boring - putting some extra work into them can add a lot to your home.
This tutorial doesn't cover connecting garages to foundations because that is a whole different tutorial altogether - if you want the video version of it you can find it here: Connecting Garages to Foundations Tutorial {TSS}
Normal Garages
Bog standard garages are just connected at the end of a drive in TS2. In TS3, they can be placed diagonally so you can get a bit more space to work with.
When building a garage you usually should never do more than 2 garage doors. Having 3 can look okay on a huge building, but never any more than that otherwise it will just look odd. Remember when building your garage, that not all garages are square boxes, you can add a little detail to garages if you want, making them more "part of the house".
Car Ports
Car ports are a good alternative to building a garage, and they are cheaper, a car port is basically a roof supported by pillars to cover and protect your car from the elements. However, roofs don't always look good on carports, having a flat panel of tiles, covered by a grid of fencing. See the image to the right for both a flat tile and roofed carport example.
Patios
Decorative Patios
Decorative patios have no real function other than to look good and provide a place for your sims to sit, they don't contain any sort of dining furniture of cooking equipment. What you aim to do is fill the space with nice benches and potted plants and hanging plants to give it a homey feel. They can also come in a natural form which is just as effective and looks more tied in with the garden; for an example of a decorative patio see the picture to the right.
Sometimes you have a bit of house you just can't seem to fit in, and it can be useful to convert it into a decorative patio. Small 1x2 spaces are good for this. A waist-high fence or half wall, plus a tall plant or statue. You don't necessarily have to have a door to it - without stuff outside to draw their attention, sims won't ever go out there anyway.
Functional Patios
Functional patios are there to serve a purpose, not just look pretty. You'll want to use a wooden or metal dining table that will work outside - an ornate old aged one outside would look out of place, because it would just fall to pieces when exposed to the elements in real life. Add some matching chairs and a barbecue grill. You can also add a trash can to dispose of the plates. Add some potted plants or a fountain for looks, if you have room.
Tips
- Stick to a colour theme that fits your house - light colours for beach houses, etc... You can use a different wall covering to highlight the patio, but make sure it coordinates and is used elsewhere on your house.
- Don't try and cram too much clutter into a small space. One nice object well-placed can be more effective than 10 scattered around willy-nilly.
- Use pillars or columns on the patio so you can put up a roof that acts as a cover to the elements. You can always do an uncovered grid of low fencing which acts as an arbor instead.
Pools and Outdoor Activities
Pools
They also give massive fun boosts and make a house more personal. Base game in TS2 and in TS3 both only allow rectangular pools. This is a break down of what we have so far.
- TS2/TS3 Base Game - Rectangular
- TS2 Nightlife - Diagonal
- TS2 Seasons - Circular Piece
- TS2 Bon Voyage - Swimmable Oceans
There are techniques for pools found here for TS2 (but some may also work with modification for TS3) to get things such as water slides, intricate shapes, and shallow pools. They are a feature that can really add realism to a house. Make sure to not make too big of a pool because it looks totally unrealistic and cheesy. Nobody likes a cheesy house!
Be sure to decorate the pool too - at least a 1 tile border of appropriate flooring (concrete, stone, tile, etc.) and a fence around the whole thing to keep kids and pets out. You can join your pool and patio to have a barbecue and eating area over to one side, with lounge chairs for sunning.
Playground Equipment
- Swings
- Slide
- Octopus Sprinkler (TS2 Open for Business)
- Lemonade Stand (TS2 Open for Business)
- Jungle Gym Tower (TS2 Apartment Life)
- Merry go Round (TS2 Apartment Life)
With the inclusion of terrain paint you can make sand pits and even dirt piles, they won't work, but it is an added detail. Little kids need some fun and teens need a place to vandalize. These will be a smart choice to add to your hood!
Landscaping
But that's not to say that minimal effort counts as landscaping - having one tree or 4 flowers along the front of a house isn't landscaping! Good landscaping requires thought, effort, planning, harmony, balance, and terrain paint!
Your best friend for landscaping is going to terrain paint. No, not flowers, or trees, or even shrubs... terrain paint. Many times you will see "realism" stated when referring to landscaping. Broken down, these are the things you should do:
- Use a dirt terrain paint around the bottom of trees, shrubs, even under flowerbeds
- Taller plants in back, shorter in front
- Use a mixture of plant types - trees, bushes, and flowers, not just trees or just flowers
- Place border fencing around areas you wish to have landscaped with bushes or flowerbeds. It is really helpful if you place them first because they help you set a limit and makes things easier to plan.
- Define a walkway - you can use floor tiles for a more structured walkway, or terrain paint in an appropriate pattern for a more casual walkway worn into the grass
- Don't have dark green grass all across the lot - even for a mansion with manicured lawns, you should have some variation.
- Try a few clicks of contrasting grass in patches here and there even if you're mostly using the default grass. It will add a lot of interest even if it's subtle. The grass and dirt/grass and flower terrain paints are good choices for this. Always use -some- terrain paint even if it's subtle!
- Don't have lots of fencing (a little is good, too much lags the game)
- Don't overdo it with flowers - they're best placed with care here and there, but don't cover your whole front yard with them, and -really- don't put several flowers on the same tile to make it look fuller - flowers are high poly and doing this really lags the game. More is not better in landscaping.
Arranging Plants
Over to the right you can see the process for building a nicely landscaped gazebo, including plant placement. Notice how the taller plants are in back and it works downwards into flat flowers. This is a step effect. This is a good, basic way of doing landscaping as it is very easy to do.
You should take care with the colours you use. It is very hard to put bright red flowers next to a bright green plant and make it work visually because of the high contrast between the colours. Be sensible when placing plants, think it through before you make the move.
- White and black make colors look more vivid. A few shots of red flowers on a black and white modern house looks very stylish.
- Complimentary colors are on the opposite ends of the spectrum and hard to pull of, but when done properly makes a HUGE impact and impression.
- Analogous colors are neighbor colors, like purple and red, they look nice together. Basic knowledge of primary and secondary colors makes this easy to understand.
- Monochrome colors are all the same, meaning all blue or red, etc. The concept of it is easy, but pulling it off without it getting repetitive is tricky.
- Let the colours of the home be your guide. Your landscaping can either coordinate (yellow or red flowers with a traditional red brick home) or contrast (yellow or red flowers with a white and slate colonial home) depending on the effect you want. Contrasting landscaping stands out more, while coordinating usually fades into the background a bit. Try different colours with your home and see what looks best.
Placement Note for TS3: Avoid placing flowers, trees, bushes, and rocks on any level other than the ground. They cause some graphical issues the first time around, by appearing as floating foliage when working on lower levels. After saving and quitting they will then proceed to get locked onto that level, meaning you won't be able to delete them until they fall back down to the bottom level. A way of getting them to fall is by saving and exiting your game... a lot.
More Terrain Paint
People often neglect terrain paint either from being forgetful or because they don't know the importance of it. Terrain adds depth, detail, and realism to your lots. It basically turns a yard into something personal, like a friend that you just walk on or something.
You can use terrain paint to make a dirt path up to your door, instead of using a tiled walkway. Just select the terrain paint tool and drag it up your lawn to your front door. In TS3, you have to option set softness of the tool. In TS2, you are stuck patiently fading the dirt into the grass with light clicks, but the end result is worth it. Of course, a casual path like this only really works for smaller homes - you wouldn't have a dirt path up to the door of a big mansion, but it can work for walkways around the sides of the house, where foot traffic may have worn a path in the carefully manicured grass.
You can also (as mentioned in the general tips section) place dirt around the base of trees, bushes, and basically anywhere plants grow. In real life, you find a patch of grassless bare dirt around the trunk of the tree's because little sunlight reaches there, so there is no way for grass to grow. To mimic this effect in-game, take your smallest sized terrain paint tool and put dirt around the bottom of the tree or flowerbed. Even cooler, if you have "Bon Voyage" installed for TS2, you get a lot of nice new terrains including pine needles, perfect for the pine trees!
For added detail, use the same dirt in the tiniest possible border you can, all around the perimeter of the house where it meets the lawn. Most houses don't have perfect grass growing right up next to the house anyways and it helps to add a bit of a contact shadow where the house meets the grass.
If you have a swingset out back (not on your balcony, remember furniture placement) try adding a bit of dirt terrain paint directly underneath the swings and fading into the grass a bit in the direction of the swing, as if the grass has been worn away from kids playing. Another option is to use a park mulch type terrain paint and make a play area. You can lower the terrain a little bit in one section and make a sandpit too using a sandy terrain!
IMPORTANT NOTE - Custom Terrain Paint in TS2: Don't use custom terrain paint for your houses to share for TS2 unless you have a very good reason to do so - something you can't accomplish with the game's paints like lava. You can't use Clean Installer to remove terrain paint from a lot package. If you even try, the lot ends up corrupted and flashes blue in the neighborhood. No one wants that.
Fencing & Half Walls
Choosing Fences
If you have a flower bed, you don't use a tall fence around it - instead, use a border fence, one of the short little ones. When you want to enclose a pool use the same small fence (or a taller fence for a house with kids). You can also use border fence around a pathway or driveway.
Use taller fences when you want to surround a patio area or a balcony or porch; use the tallest fences and the brick and stone fences for lot borders. Just bear in mind, fences tend to be high poly - try to avoid putting them all the way around a lot, especially a large one.
Once It's Built...
When you finish up a house you must, MUST make sure that the whole thing fits together properly and it does not turn out as a complete hodge podge of different techniques and designs. This is something that that can't really be taught in this tutorial (though some elements of it are covered above). Instead, you should do some research on real houses, architecture styles, and existing sim houses that others have made to get a feel for an overall aesthetic. You just need to make sure that when adding in paths and wall paint on the outside of a house that they match with each other, with the planting and with the roof! So go get researching!
Final Results
Below are 2 different houses made by Deluxe Designs and QBUILDERZ from MTS showing you the finalised versions an attempt to turn boxes into good houses turned out with and without foundations.
|
 |
| Building Great Realistic Houses - From the Ground Up: Main Page | Introduction and general info on getting started with your house. |
|---|---|
| Exterior | Building the shell of your house, roofs, windows, and landscaping. |
| Interior | Room sizing and layout, decorating, furnishing, and all the fun details. |