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Nev's Building Tutorials (basic and advanced CFE, basements, sunken areas)
claudekn
Posts: 152 Member
Hello and do come in! I decided that I needed to organise all the guides I had written so I figured I would follow the examples of everyone else here and create one big thread where everyone can read the guides and ask any questions as well.
So, without further ado, here is the list of guides -
Guide to Constrainfloorelevation and CFE basics
Guide to Basic Wall Curving
Guide to advanced wall curving
Guide to sunken rooms
Guide to Walk-out basements
Guide to above-ground basements
And in case you are interested I listed some of my builds here - Nev's Builds and Requests Thread
Enjoy
So, without further ado, here is the list of guides -
Guide to Constrainfloorelevation and CFE basics
Guide to Basic Wall Curving
Guide to advanced wall curving
Guide to sunken rooms
Guide to Walk-out basements
Guide to above-ground basements
And in case you are interested I listed some of my builds here - Nev's Builds and Requests Thread
Enjoy
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To get started, what is CFE. CFE stands for Constrainfloorelevation. It is a cheat so you must start the command console using Cntl-Shft-C. After this the two cheats to know are CFE true and CFE false. It is noteworthy here that the moveobjects on cheat is also quite useful when utilizing CFE false, but that is a subject for another guide.
So to truly understand that CFE false is, we must first discuss CFE true. CFE true is the normal mode of the game with which most of you builders are familiar. In the CFE true mode, the floors on anything you build in build mode are locked. You might notice when you try to move terrain around a wall that you are not allowed. This is because the game locks in the height of the floor of that wall, both the ground and ceiling. In CFE true mode, you are ONLY allowed to work with the actual terrain, that is to say the ground level where there is grass (or something similar).
Now before we even start with CFE false, let us discuss the CFE toolbox. You can find this to the very right of the build mode box under Terrain tools. The three main tools utilized when working with CFE are the raise and lower terrain tool as well as the level terrain tool. Soften terrain is more for landscaping, the water tool is for creating lakes and such and the flatten lot tool should only ever be utilized at the very beginning before you build anything. After this, this tool should be avoided entirely.
Now let us see these tools in action. Below you can see the use of lower terrain to create a sort of trough. For this kind of landscaping, both CFE true or false could to used, however, you should be using CFE true if this is the sort of task you are doing. Note that for both lower and raise terrain, the amount of clicks you utilize can be … inaccurate. I never gamed on Sims 2, but I read that clicks were much more accurate in that game. Some builders will tell you that a single click is not accurate in Sims 3. However this is not true. What they mean is that it is difficult to tell if you clicked once or twice, etc. However, a single click will always raise or lower the terrain by the exact same amount each time. The difficulty is that you might click once with your mouse but the terrain might raise or lower by two clicks. Once you become familiar with terrain though, it is easy to tell how many times you clicked. These days I can usually tell how many clicks a curve is just by looking at it.
After that soften terrain was utilized to even it out a bit.
And now to get it back to normal, you can utilize level terrain and drag it over the entire trough. With level terrain, where you start will be the level it will throw onto the rest of the area. So here, for instance, you should start on a tile at ground level, then drag the box over the entire trough area.
So what is CFE false. Once you are building in the CFE false mode, the rules of the build game are different. You are now allowed to utilize the Terrain tools to change the height of any floor. This includes the ground floor of walls as well as the ceiling. You can even curve air (that is to say floors without actual floor tiles). Most of the time the reason you are curving a floor is to curve a wall. Curved floors are actually not the best idea since they are not utilizable by your Sims. Thus when I discuss wall curving, the two ideas (floor and wall curving) are really one and the same. Of course you can curve a floor that does not have any walls hah.
Alright so now we know a bit about what CFE actually is. Let’s go over some of the basics of what CFE can and cannot do.
The first subject, foundations! Foundations are definitely one of the nicer tools for a builder. Unlike a wall, you can mess with the terrain around a foundation. There are two key heights to a foundation or any wall.
Here we can see three different structures. To the left is normally what one might call a guide wall. In the middle you can see a foundation. To the right you can see a wall of normal height. Now let’s take a look at some of the things you can do with foundation.
First notice that when CFE is set to true, you cannot utilize the level terrain tool to change wall heights. The tool will go from green to red to show that it is not allowed.
Also noteworthy is that you can change the terrain around foundation. Here you can see I lowered the terrain in front of the foundation. However when I lower the terrain in front of the wall it cannot actually change the terrain directly under the wall.
When you delete a section of foundation when CFE is true, it will maintain the foundation height.
Now let’s see the same action with CFE false. Since floor elevation is no longer locked, deleting foundation will now force the surrounding foundation to normal wall height.
Do not worry though! There is an easy fix. Just set CFE to false and utilize the level terrain tool to level the area back to normal foundation height.
When you are starting with CFE, there are two basic wall heights with which you should familiarize yourself. You can see both of them here, the height of a foundation wall (4 clicks) and the height of a normal wall (16 clicks). These two heights are important for a few reasons. Foundation height is the smallest height a wall can be without messing with the floor above or below it. Normal wall height is the height a wall must be in order to build other walls next to it when in CFE true mode. This might sound weird now, but as you read on, it should become clearer.
Changing a wall of one height to another is a very easy task. Remember earlier when CFE was set to true and we tried to utilize the level terrain tool but it did not work. Now let us take a look at the same scenario with CFE set to false. Here you can see the level terrain tool being utilized to lower the wall structure to the same height as the foundation.
When you are utilizing the level terrain tool in such a manner, there are certain things you must know. Each tile of wall has six surrounding tiles that can be raised or lowered to curve it. Let us take a look. Here you can see a single tile of wall. To the left and right of it you can see a single tile of ceiling.
In order to see the full six though we must look at a full wall. The wall tile at which we are going to look is underscored here.
You can see the two tiles we already saw before. Now there are also two tiles to the front and back of the wall tile.
And of course there are the three tiles behind the wall. Here you can see all six being underscored. These are the six tiles you would utilize to curve that single tile of wall. Anything further will not change that wall tile.
Let us take a look at this in action. Here we are going to lower a single tile of normal height wall to the foundation height. You can see that the tiles directly above it were utilized to do so.
Now, though, because this wall tile is side by side with other wall tiles, those wall tiles will also be curved. Take a look at the tile directly to the left of the tile we just lowered. Although we lowered the tiles directly above that wall tile, those tiles were also the rightmost tiles of the six tiles for the wall tile to its left. I know that sounds a bit weird. The idea is that if you look at any two wall tiles that are side by side, they will each be in the others six ceiling tiles. This is the most basic and most fundamental idea behind the entirety of wall curving.
Take another look at the wall tile to the left that is slanted with a negative incline. The rightmost of its six tiles are of foundation height.
However, the leftmost of its six tiles remain at normal wall height. This is why the wall curved!
The next subject I am going to discuss is the order of how wall curving works. When you change the height of any floor, every floor above it will change as well. On the other hand, when you change the floor of say the second, third, fourth or fifth floors, the floors below will retain their original curve (even if that is just straight). This is why we use guide walls, to change floor heights of one story without changing the others.
Now let us see this idea in action. First we are going to try raising the height of the normal wall by two clicks. The first technique we could use is to just raise the ground under it by two clicks.
This however is not ideal. So instead let us raise the guide wall by two clicks. Notice that raising the ground under the first floor of the guide wall creates the same curve to the second floor.
Now level off the first floor of the guide wall utilizing the level terrain tool.
And finally we can now utilize this guide wall to raise the height of the normal wall by two clicks. We do this by utilizing the level terrain tool to drag from the new guide wall height all the way to the normal wall.
And there you see it. A new wall height was created without messing with the ground under the wall.
On that note, let us go back to CFE set to true for a moment. It is noteworthy to mention that after a wall has been curved, you can change the terrain under it as long as there is no wall in the way. I can show this by curving the guide wall a bit (note at this time CFE is set to false). Again note, you should never curve walls this way hah. Notice, though, that the ground underneath the curved wall is also curved.
Now delete the first floor wall.
Now you can go ahead and landscape underneath the curved wall (while CFE is set to true) without messing with the curved wall section.
Ok the last thing I am going to discuss is why the height of a foundation wall and the height of a normal wall are so crucial. I know I mentioned it before without going into much detail, but that was because it was necessary to discuss a few things before we discussed this.
First let us take a look at normal wall height. This height is important because it is the only height at which you can create new walls while CFE is set to true. We can use the foundation to see what I mean. First level the foundation to normal wall height by utilizing the level terrain tool from the normal wall to the foundation.
Although I forgot to take an image of it, you then delete two tiles of the foundation and now you can create a wall next to the foundation.
If you tried to create a wall next to any other height foundation, it would not work while CFE is set to true. You could force it in CFE false, but it will create weird curves then. The reason I am detailing this is because whenever you curve walls, you always should make certain that the inner walls maintain a normal wall height. So let us imagine you are trying to curve the outside of a structure. In fact let us take a look at one of my recent builds, Beyond Moderne. The roof and ground floor are both curved with a concave curve. But if we take a look at the inside, you can see that there is one tile of floor between the curved wall and the inner wall. This covers the awkward slanted floor area and allows the inner area to remain of a normal wall height. This height is needed to make the area utilizable by actual sims. If the floor remained curved, you would not be able to furnish correctly.
Now let us discuss foundation height walls. This height is important because it is the smallest height a wall can be before it changes the heights of the walls above and below it. What does this mean. Let us start by curving the guide wall. I am just going to randomly change the height of the ground below the guide wall. Note that this is NEVER the right technique to curve a wall hah, but for this guide it works. Notice that both the first and second story walls mimic the curve of the ground.
Now as I mentioned before, you can change the height of any wall above another without messing with the wall below. Thus we are going to even out the second story wall.
You can see that the first floor wall maintains the same curve from before, while the second story is now straight.
Now let us change the ground below the guide wall dramatically. You can see now that the height of the first floor is actually taller than the normal height of the second floor.
Now let us try flattening the second story wall again.
This time notice that flattening the second story actually changed the first story. That is because the entire height of the second story must be, at a minimum, the height of a foundation wall (4 clicks). You can see here that the height of the second story in the middle is indeed the height of a foundation wall. Although, in order for the game to do so, it had to lower the height of the first story wall.
Well, that is it for now! Cheers!
Before we get started, I am going to mention a few things from the advanced guide. If you already read that guide, you won’t need to reread these things. However, they are the fundamentals and are worth reiterating in this guide.
1. Always start from the bottom. This is the most basic and incredible reason why we are able to create some unique and beautiful structures. The way CFE works is that curving the lowest level will consequently curve every level above that. Even if there is no actual wall above it, you must imagine as though your entire lot is covered in 5 imaginary square stories and when you curve a wall, the air above it will curve as well, as if there was floor there. The good news is that when you start curving the second and third and fourth and fifth levels, the first level maintains the curve you created. However, this leads to guideline number 2!
2. Always think ahead. Because of rule number one you must usually have a clear idea of what you want to do with all the levels with which you are working. This is because imagine you have curved the first, second, third and fourth stories and are working on the fifth. But then imagine you changed your mind about the curvature of the first story and wanted to redo it. Recurving the first story will then curve that area of every story above it. This leads to guideline number 3!
3. CFE can be… frustrating. Because of its nature, wanting to change anything can lead to having to start over.
4. Always remember as you curve that coloring can have a very strong effect. So while something might not look a certain way, it might look exactly the way you were imagining once you have begun coloring it. And always and I mean ALWAYS color in EVERYTHING before you start curving. Once you begin curving you cannot build floors and ceilings on curved walls so even if you do not think you are going to use them, fill in every floor and ceiling. You can always delete later but you cannot fill in later. As for the walls, I recommend using a different color for each story or level, so you can easily see your curvature as you go.
5. Some terms – guide walls are the walls we use to guide the curve of our actual structure, normal height walls are walls that maintain the default height of a wall when you first build it, foundation height walls are walls that have been CFE’d to the same height as a foundation wall. Because you are likely going to be dealing with walls greater than and less than the height of a normal wall, I also recommend choosing wall coverings that have a base design along the bottom. This is so you can easily see which walls are greater or less than normal height. Also remember that foundation height is the lowest a wall can go before it begins to curve the wall below it.
6. Your first task of course is to actually write in CFE lol. You can start the console with cntl-shft-c. After this the exact command is constrainfloorelevation false. Now before we begin with curving the actual walls, it is necessary to discuss when CFE is needed and when it is not. As you build you will most likely be going back and forth between CFE true and false. CFE false is ONLY for curving walls and foundation. Make certain that when you are working on terrain, use CFE true so it does not do anything to the walls you spend so long curving lol.
7. Guide walls
So the first task in any kind of wall curving is guide walls. You build these walls around areas you want to curve. It is a good idea to build them on each side of the curved area as you are going to need to level the terrain from one guide wall to the next. These guide walls are what we use to lower and raise terrain. The core of the building is NEVER raised or lowered. We only raise and lower the ground underneath a guide wall. For this you want to select the medium size brush on lowest softness. Choose an area of your guide wall to raise or lower. The medium sized brush creates a nice rectangular intend, thus allowing a leveled area on the guide wall. With this level, you then utilize level terrain to level the rest of the guide wall to this height. From there you can begin using level terrain to curve your main structure.
8. Creating curves
The key to creating curves the way you want is clicks. Now while clicks are not exact, a gentle nudge on your mouse key will always give you the same height when you lower or raise the ground. This is what I am going to call one click. If you hold the mouse button for more than a fraction of a section, you might unintentionally get 2-3 clicks. Always work in terms of one click at a time, even if you are raising or lowering terrain by 20 clicks, you want to be certain it is 20 after all and not 19 lol! Knowing this, there are 2 basic kinds of curves you can create, concave and convex. Concave curves create an outward form, while convex curves go inward. To create convex curves you start by moving the terrain by a small number then increasing. So first one click, then level the terrain, then four clicks, then level, then seven clicks, etc. To create concave curves you start by moving the terrain by a large number then decreasing. So first seven clicks, then level the terrain, then four clicks, then level, then one click, then level, etc.
Now you might be wondering what to level. You start with the entirety of your guide wall. After that it is based on what kind of form you are creating. I normally level 2 tiles at a time, or 3. To create a curve you use your guide wall to level 2-3 of the tiles on your core structure and then adjust your guide wall to a new height and level the next 2-3 tiles. You leave 1 tile area between leveling otherwise the new curve will just take over the old one instead of creating a new curve in between the two (again if this makes no sense at all, you likely are going to need to see the guide to basic curving first lol). Note that the softest curve you can make is a 1-2-3 or 3-2-1 click curve. The larger the difference between how many new clicks you do, the more dramatic the curve.
For those of you unfamiliar with these terms in general, you can see a good instance of their use right in game with the fountains! When you create curved fountains you are given 2 choices, a concave curve and a convex curve. The basic 1-2-3 or 3-2-1 curve would be the same as any curved fountain you create with the same width and length. When you create fountains with different widths and lengths, you are creating a curve with a greater or lesser incline.
Ok with that out of the way, let’s get started on the actual tutorial!
- Build your core. Here we can see the basic structure and what will be the usable area of this house. As with any building using CFE, from the most basic like this to the most advanced, you want to make certain you leave an area that is of normal wall height so sims can actually live there lol. This first image is of that. Do not worry about creating rooms yet as anything with a normal wall height can be walled even after curving other areas of the building.
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- Build your roof. This is the area we are going to curve. You might notice there is an extra wall there, this will be detailed later.
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- Cover all the floors, ceilings and walls. This is key as you won’t be able to do so after you begin curving. Notice how I utilized a wall covering with a different color base. This is a good indicator for when your walls are more or less than the height of a normal wall. If they are more the line will curve, if they are less the line will curve down and vanish. I also colored the front differently as this area is going to be deleted later.
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- I threw in a fence which if you want to do you must also do before curving as you sometimes cannot do so afterwards. More details on why a fence here later.
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- Now we build our guide wall. Remember that it should be a bit away from your structure and is you are making advanced structures, you should create guide walls on the other side as well. If you are just starting leave yourself some room as working in tight areas can be difficult (but doable!)
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- To start we are going to lower the roof to foundation height. This is 8 clicks down on the guide wall. Remember to use the medium size square brush on the lowest softness.
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- Then level the guide wall.
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- Now lower the roof.
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- Notice our base line vanished on the second floor indicating a lower than normal height wall. Notice also that the first floor remains the normal height.
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- Now we are going to begin our first curve, a convex curve to start off the wave. Raise the floor by 2 clicks.
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- Level the guide wall.
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- Level the roof. Notice that I do not start with the first tile. As I mentioned you must start 1 tile away otherwise you will just raise the edge to the new height, rather than create a new incline. I am leveling 2 tiles at a time. You can do one but it is easier to see what to do with 2-3.
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- Here you can see both the new incline as well as the flat area that is the new height of that section of the roof.
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- Now because we are doing a convex curve, we must raise the terrain by a number greater than 2. Remember if we wanted to do a straight line, we would raise it by another 2, and a concave curve would be less than 2. Here we are going to do 6. I started with just 4, which I realized was not enough, so you are going to see 2 images, the first is raised by 4, but then I raise it by another 2.
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- Now you want to level your structure. Notice again that we are starting one tile away from the first incline.
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- And here we can see the start of our convex curve.
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- Now we want to smooth this out into a wave with a gentle concave curve. So we must raise the terrain by a number less than 6. I chose 2.
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- Now level out the guide wall.
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- And then level the structure. I do not have the leveling shown here, no idea why, I must have forgotten to take the image, but you get the idea. You can see now that not only do we have the convex curve, but the start of the concave curve as well. We then lower the terrain by 2 again to create the downward concave curve on the otherwise. Notice that because the incline before this is technically zero (flat) that we are still decreasing the number for a concave curve, in this case negative 2.
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- Level off the guide wall.
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- Now we are going to level the structure, again 1 tile away from the last curve.
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- And now we can see our first wave!
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- The next wave is going to have a very gentle convex curve to even it out. Here we are going to raise the terrain by 1.
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- Level the guide wall and then the structure. Now notice here that while I did create the start of a convex curve, it creates this awkward acute angle. Here is when we must use our creativity to make it look better.
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- I leveled the structure at the same height but two tiles away instead of one.
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- Here you can see a much more even curve. Note that if the building had been longer, we could create more inclines to smooth out the angles, but for now we only have so many tiles with which to work.
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- Because we are looking to create a convex curve, the next number must be greater than 2, so again I chose 6.
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- Level out the guide wall and then the structure, again now we can go back to one tile away.
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- There we see it, the start of our second wave.
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- Now we are going to revisit why I created an inner wall. Remember these walls must be created before curving if you intend to do something creative. This new bit of creativity is what can make good houses look great, instead of just doing a normal curve. I am going to lift the curve on the ceiling of the first wall to create a curvature on the floor of the second wall. Then after we delete this gray area of the first floor, we can see a rather cool wave. So we begin by raising the guide wall to the current height of the first floor (normal height). Now normally you would want to have started with this, remember always start with the bottom, but in all honesty I forgot hah.
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- We now raise the guide wall by 8 to create the edge of the wave in the front (note that here we are leveling the guide wall of the first floor, not the second like before).
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- We then raise the front of the first floor. You might be wondering how the front of the second floor is now curving down, but you can ignore this as I deleted a few images in between as I was working with various heights.
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- After you alter the height of the first floor, the height of the second floor goes back to normal wall height, while the height of the second floor is now taller than normal wall height (curve of the base line).
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- Now we lower the guide wall by 2. Notice that while we are lowering the wall to create a concave curve, the actual wall height will raise because we are lowering the guide wall but the actual structure is still at normal wall height.
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- Now level the guide wall on the first floor (not the second).
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- Lastly we level the structure one tile away.
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- We now get this awkward look. This is because we have been leveling 2 tiles at a time. While I could have just done 1, I did this to show you what to do if you did this on something else.
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- Here we are lowering the extra tile back down to the height of the rest of the floor.
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- And now we can see the half concave curve that was the original idea.
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- Ok back to the second floor. Now these next few things would not have been needed had we started on the first floor, but they are good knowledge for instances when you want to fix something on a lower floor and then fix the floors above it again. We start by finding out the height at which we were. This is shown here by leveling the guide wall back to the height where we left off on the structure.
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- I am going to be going through some tries I did here before arriving at what I was thinking originally. I had curved the second floor but did not like how it looked when I deleted the first floor (see image below), so I decided to raise the first floor some more. You can also see that I utilized the same find where we were technique on the first floor now.
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- Now I raised the guide wall by 8 clicks again, and then another 2 (yes you can just do 10 lol, but these are the images I took and I attached them both so no one would get confused).
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- Then leveled the structure (notice how it is taller than before).
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- Here we see the new height and the second floor needing to be fixed again.
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- We find out where we were on the second floor.
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- Now I did not go into detail on this earlier, but after you find out where you were, you must work with the wall to find that height again. Once you move the terrain under a guide wall, the walls above it will again go back to normal height. You can notice here that I had to lower the height to get the second floor back to where it used to be (the left area of the image is what we lowered, the right is where it used to be).
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- Now we can level the guide wall in its entirety.
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- After this we are going to lower the very last line to this height (not shown).
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- Here is the final structure. I deleted some of the wall on the first floor, so you can see the wave that was the original idea. Originally I had intended for the front of the second floor ceiling and first floor ceiling to meet, but I forgot one of the fundamentals, the minimum height between two walls must be the height of the foundation wall. So while it is not ideal, fret not, this is where the fence comes in.
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- I am now going to color the walls, delete some extra flooring and walls, do some terraining, and throw in a few rocks and shrubs. You might have been thinking that the structure you see in the image above is quite… unattractive, but remember the fundamentals. Always thinking about your coloring and structure as you go. As you can see from below, deleting a few walls, throwing in some color and a bit of designing and behold, a very nice structure, ideal for one of the rooms in a beachfront modern cottage. And a quick note here, curved rooms are not entirely unusable. Here you could easily create stairs to the second floor and use this room as a sun room by throwing in a few lounge chairs maybe some greenery and a coffee table.
- Some of the things you could do (before starting your building) were to have built the room on two single tile lines of foundation so you can see the sand under it, thrown in a deck and created other rooms, a few with flat roofs and maybe another with a similar roof to this. You can imagine the final house would be quite something.
There you see it, a full guide to the basics of wall curving, with some intermediate techniques thrown in. If you think of any questions or get stuck, let me know. It might all sound a bit confusing when you read it, but once you get started curving walls, you will be in wonder at all the create and incredible things you can do! Thanks for reading, cheers!
But before we do! A few fundamentals to remember. These might not all make sense right now, but will be reiterated throughout the guide.
1. Always start from the bottom. This is the most basic and incredible reason why we are able to create some unique and beautiful structures. The way CFE works is that curving the lowest level will consequently curve every level above that. Even if there is no actual wall above it, you must imagine as though your entire lot is covered in 5 imaginary square stories and when you curve a wall, the air above it will curve as well, as if there was floor there. The good news is that when you start curving the second and third and fourth and fifth levels, the first level maintains the curve you created. However, this leads to guideline number 2!
2. Always think ahead. Because of rule number one you must usually have a clear idea of what you want to do with all the levels with which you are working. This is because imagine you have curved the first, second, third and fourth stories and are working on the fifth. But then imagine you changed your mind about the curvature of the first story and wanted to redo it. Recurving the first story will then curve that area of every story above it. This leads to guideline number 3!
3. CFE can be… frustrating. Because of its nature, wanting to change anything can lead to having to start over.
4. Always remember as you curve that coloring can have a very strong effect. So while something might not look a certain way, it might look exactly the way you were imagining once you have begun coloring it. And always and I mean ALWAYS color in EVERYTHING before you start curving. Once you begin curving you cannot build floors and ceilings on curved walls so even if you do not think you are going to use them, fill in every floor and ceiling. You can always delete later but you cannot fill in later. As for the walls, I recommend using a different color for each story or level, so you can easily see your curvature as you go.
5. Some terms – guide walls are the walls we use to guide the curve of our actual structure, normal height walls are walls that maintain the default height of a wall when you first build it, foundation height walls are walls that have been CFE’d to the same height as a foundation wall. Because you are likely going to be dealing with walls greater than and less than the height of a normal wall, I also recommend choosing wall coverings that have a base design along the bottom. This is so you can easily see which walls are greater or less than normal height. Also remember that foundation height is the lowest a wall can go before it begins to curve the wall below it.
6. Your first task of course is to actually write in CFE lol. You can start the console with cntl-shft-c. After this the exact command is constrainfloorelevation false. Now before we begin with curving the actual walls, it is necessary to discuss when CFE is needed and when it is not. As you build you will most likely be going back and forth between CFE true and false. CFE false is ONLY for curving walls and foundation. Make certain that when you are working on terrain, use CFE true so it does not do anything to the walls you spend so long curving lol.
Here we can see an instance of when we would use both CFE true and false. The natural wall border of the walk-out basement is created using CFE true since this is actual terrain. The columns on the deck however were curved using CFE false since this is a wall area.
Ok with these things in mind, let’s get started.
Build your core
Before you start but after you have thought out what you want to do, build your core structure. This tutorial will be utilizing my gryffin house so in this case, your core is the body of the gryffin. You want to create a general structure, even if it is not the final structure. You can see from the image here that what I started with was no where near what the end building looks like lol. This core is mainly to get you a good feel for the structure and the room with which you have to work. As you build your core, you must bear in mind your guide walls (see next section). You want to leave about 2 tiles between your structure and your guide walls and at least 1-2 tiles between your guide walls and the edge of your lot. As you build, be creative. Remember that besides curving the walls, you can also create basic forms using diagonal walls. And since the overall goal is to make the house actually utilizable for sims, you want to make certain to have an area of the core where there are going to be normal height walls. Here that would be the body of the gryffin. Once you have your core built, you can move onto guide walls.
Here we can see the core of the gryffin building. You can notice that it clearly does not look a thing like the final structure lol. However it is always necessary to create a base for yourself and then decide where to start and what needs to be curved first so you do not mess with the already curved sections later.
Guide walls
So the first task in any kind of wall curving is guide walls. You build these walls around areas you want to curve. It is a good idea to build them on each side of the curved area as you are going to need to level the terrain from one guide wall to the next. These guide walls are what we use to lower and raise terrain. The core of the building is NEVER raised or lowered. We only raise and lower the ground underneath a guide wall. For this you want to select the medium size brush on lowest softness. Choose an area of your guide wall to raise or lower. The medium sized brush creates a nice rectangular intend, thus allowing a leveled area on the guide wall. With this level, you then utilize level terrain to level the rest of the guide wall to this height. From there you can begin using level terrain to curve your main structure. If you have no clue as to what this means, this information will be much more clearly detailed in the guide to basic wall curving.
Here we can see the guide walls that were used in creating the creature’s head.
Here is the guide wall that was used in curving the back of the creature. I had to use another guide wall not shown here to create the two degree curve (see mega advanced techniques later lol)
And here is the creature after both the head and back were curved. You can ignore the tail as I deleted it later.
Here we have the guide wall that was used in creating the new tail. You can see that because I was close to the edge of the lot I utilized a diagonal wall to lower the terrain under the guide wall (you can also see the medium sized brush indent of this lowered terrain to the right).
Creating curves
The key to creating curves the way you want is clicks. Now while clicks are not exact, a gentle nudge on your mouse key will always give you the same height when you lower or raise the ground. This is what I am going to call one click. If you hold the mouse button for more than a fraction of a section, you might unintentionally get 2-3 clicks. Always work in terms of one click at a time, even if you are raising or lowering terrain by 20 clicks, you want to be certain it is 20 after all and not 19 lol! Knowing this, there are 2 basic kinds of curves you can create, concave and convex. Concave curves create an outward form, while convex curves go inward. To create convex curves you start by moving the terrain by a small number then increasing. So first one click, then level the terrain, then four clicks, then level, then seven clicks, etc. To create concave curves you start by moving the terrain by a large number then decreasing. So first seven clicks, then level the terrain, then four clicks, then level, then one click, then level, etc.
Now you might be wondering what to level. You start with the entirety of your guide wall. After that it is based on what kind of form you are creating. I normally level 2 tiles at a time, or 3. To create a curve you use your guide wall to level 2-3 of the tiles on your core structure and then adjust your guide wall to a new height and level the next 2-3 tiles. You leave 1 tile area between leveling otherwise the new curve will just take over the old one instead of creating a new curve in between the two (again if this makes no sense at all, you likely are going to need to see the guide to basic curving first lol). Note that the softest curve you can make is a 1-2-3 or 3-2-1 click curve. The larger the difference between how many new clicks you do, the more dramatic the curve.
Here we can see a good use of both kinds of curves. Looking at the right of the image going left we start the roof with a convex arch and then level it off with a concave curve and after that it is flat.
There is of course one more kind of incline and that is the straight incline. This is the most basic kind and involves the same number of clicks each time. This can be one click for each new level to create a soft incline or a much greater number to create a more dramatic incline.
Here is a good instance of the straight curve with a negative incline –
Now what does all this mean. Let’s go into some detail using the wings of the gryffin. First the thinking ahead. With the right wing you can see that I used a large convex curve to lift the wing. I then used a small concave curve to get it to a level height and another concave curve to lower the edge of the wing just a little. With the left wing I again used a large convex curve to lift the wing. This time however, I intended for the wing to curve down so I created a small concave curve at the max height of the wing to gently curve it but then I used a much more dramatic concave curve to fold the wing down. It is necessary to think ahead like this when you are creating curves that are not symmetrical.
Here are the guide walls that were used in creating the wing structure.
I then created the floor and ceiling of the wings. Again just cover extra area even if you do not intend to actually use it.
After this I created the outline of the actual wing structure using fences. Again this must be done before curving as you are not able to build on dramatically curved walls. I colored them with a metal for a stark effect.
Here we can see the first tile curve of the convex curve that was used to lift the wings.
And here is the second tile of the curve. You can now see the start of the convex curve. It will always take curving at least two tiles to see the actual curvature.
Lastly here we can see the final curving of the wings before deleting the extra flooring. You can see the invisible edge tile that was used to end the curve.
Now we delete the extra flooring and viola, the wings.
One thing to remember here is to always create flooring one tile beyond what you intend to curve. This is because of the fact that you must level tiles one away from the last line curved. So to avoid having an awkward flat line of tile at the edge of your curve we curve the tile beyond the edge to curve the actual edge. This tile of floor can then be deleted, leaving a nice curve on your actual edge.
Foundation height walls
Before we go on any further, there is one last very fundamental lesson to learn and that is using foundation height or near foundation height walls. When you want to curve both horizontal ends of a wall, you must use foundation height walls in between. The easiest instance I know of this can be seen in the guitar from my Gout de la Musique structure. In order to create the base of the guitar, I needed to curve both ends of the wall. Thus I first needed to create a foundation height wall below the base and use a convex curve to curve that wall. Of course that wall’s ceiling is also the floor of the next level, this is what created the base. Then I needed yet another near foundation height wall above the base to create the downward curve on both sides. If I did not do this, I would not have been able to curve the handle of the guitar.
Here we can see that a foundation height wall was used to create the three curves. If I did not use one here, there would not be a straight line above them.
Here is the guitar. You can see the near foundation height wall in between the two sections of the guitar. It was used in creating both the ceiling curve of the base and the lower curve of the handle. The foundation height wall that was used to create the lower curve of the base has been deleted but you can imagine the two convex curves that were utilized in creating it.
Think of these near foundation height walls as a means to and end. When you are building and curving you use them to create the curves you want. But then you can delete them. However, because you won’t be able to create inner walls after curving, it is necessary to again think ahead and create walls on the inside so that when you delete the walls you were using as a location holder, there is still something inside and not a giant void. Something to note, these foundation height walls can also be used to create cool split level stories, but remember, since it is not actual foundation, you must build border walls before you level ceilings.
Here is what I mean when I am referring to multilevel rooms created by cutting into a foundation or a foundation height wall.
Foundation height and near foundation height walls have one more great use. They can cover the awkward areas of a building where a curved section meets an uncurved section. You just build another story over this and reduce it's height to a near foundation level and it covers this area. If you do not understand what I mean, see the diagonal curves section under mega advanced techniques.
Using curves to create actual forms
I talked briefly about the wings already. Using curved walls to create realistic looking objects is a combination of utilizing diagonal walls and curving walls in the right areas. For this, we can discuss the head of the gryffin, which is the head of a hawk or some kind of bird according to myth lol. So the first task was creating the core, which you can see here along with the surrounding guide walls. Once this was done I chose a small area as my area to raise and lower the guide wall. Now I first lowered the first story all the way down to foundation height and then created a small convex curve to create the base of the head. I then curved the next level in a similar fashion to get the lower mouth. The next level was the actual entrance hall so it was of a near normal wall height. The base of this level was already curved for the lower mouth so I created a much more dramatic curve on the ceiling here for the rest of the mouth. The ceiling of the next floor was curved similarly to create the ceiling of the mouth. After that there was only one floor level left which I used for the actual head and eyes. You may notice that I created the walls to the body before I began curving because I would not be able to create them after the head was formed. Finally I flattened the body so I could curve that in a different manner. To form those extreme angles, the key is to move the height of those invisible edge tiles. Since there is no actual flooring or walls there, it does not matter what they look like. However, they are fundamental to the edges of your curves.
Mega advanced wall-curving techniques
There are a few techniques that you can do to create some unique curves in your structures. The main one is the two-degree curve. This is a kind of curve that involves curving a floor in two directions at the same time. Normally when creating any curve you use the level terrain tool in straight lines. While this does curve the wall, it curves the sections of the floor evenly. The only time a two-degree curve was used in the gryffin was along the back of the neck area, directly after the end of the head. Guide walls were created along both sides of the back. I then used straight lines to level the terrain from both sides in a sort of diagonal manner. The overall technique can be … difficult at best and is quite hard to get into words, you mainly just have to get a feel for the curve you are looking to create and then use level terrain in straight decreasing lines. What I mean by this is say the start of your structure is 2 tiles away from the guide wall and the end of the structure is 7 tiles away. You can start by leveling the floor in a straight line using all 7 tiles in both directions. You can then level 5 tiles, then 3 then 2 (or any order that is decreasing). This creates the diagonal since you normally would be leveling all 7 tiles for each click of your guide wall.
The next technique is curving diagonal walls diagonally. We can curve diagonal walls using straight lines which is what I did in the gryffin. However let us take a look at the diagonal curve seen in the right side of the roof area of Maison Chouette here. Quick note here, you can see here there is a downward curve where the diagonal arch meets the rest of the building. I rather liked it, but this is what I was referring to earlier when I mentioned awkward curves created by curved wall meeting normal height wall. This area could have been covered using another story (created beforehand) and then curving the wall and lastly leveling the extra story to cover this area.
This is a diagonal floor curved diagonally. The was done using a diagonal guide wall. However since you cannot level terrain diagonally, what you do is use level the terrain in rectangular areas from the guide wall to the actual structure. You cannot curve more than 1-2 tiles diagonally because of the nature of this curve. You are curving using the corner tiles of the rectangular level terrain area so you can go only 1 or 2 tiles into the diagonal. Any more and you would uncurve areas that you just curved.
Quick edit here - You can actually curve an area greater than 1-2 tiles, but the key is to create diagonal guide walls to the sides of your building rather than in front of it. But be careful since this will require a greater area to work and you do not want to mistakenly curve other areas of your building. If you want to do this, I would suggest making it one of the earlier things you curve.
The last technique is unreliable at best. I am going to call it single tile level terrain clicking lol. What I mean here is using the level terrain tool to click single tiles in certain areas. Doing so can create some unique curvature but it is really unclear how it does so. I know I have single clicked the SAME tile getting different curves sometimes, so I really have no idea how the game decides what it does here. You can see a good instance of this in the wing covering the front yard, imaged here.
Notice the area where the wing meets the back of the gryffin (seen here to the left side of the image). The wing does not lift evenly like it does on the other wing. Instead we see this gorgeous curve that was created rather by mistake. The wing was initially lifting an area of the back, which looked awkward. I used the single click technique to flatter that area of the back and it created this curve lol. Another area where single clicking was utilized was curving the back and neck area. Two-degree curves like this are almost always going to require some single clicking to even out some areas.
The End
I threw in some images of the nearly finished building in case you wanted to see how coloring and other designing can enhance the overall look. You may notice how the legs are much more defined using coloring and creating the claws you see. Similar contrast in the tail as well as coloring all the feathered areas of the wings and neck the same dark blue color create some nice detail.
Let us start! First build a room of normal wall height as well as a two story guide wall. Your guide wall does not need to be so far from your structure, but it really does not matter as long as it covers the entire distance of one side of the room.
Next build the second story. This story is going to be the sunken story. Go ahead and color the walls and floor tiles as well, although because everything will remain straight and uncovered doing so beforehand is not necessary. At this time, you must also build the inner walls of this floor for where you would like the sunken rooms to be. This must be done before sinking the story!
Lastly I built a third story wall so you could see how the sunken room will look.
Here I underscored the floor that is to be sunken so you can see it (right now it is of normal wall height). Next I lowered the guide wall by 8 clicks. Now I am going to discuss this bit even though it is incorrect. The correct amount I found out is 6 clicks. However, we can fix this in a moment.
After I lowered the guide wall, I evened the guide wall and then leveled the second floor of the house to this new height.
Here you can see an image of the new structure. I underscored the sunken floor again so you could see it now. This height is what I call foundation wall height. However for whatever reason the game does not let you create 4 click stairs in sunken stories like you can in foundation. It only allows 6 click stairs.
In this image, before fixing the height, I also went ahead and deleted the floor over which I had built walls in the second story. This is how the sunken room is created. At this time I tried rather unsuccessfully to build stairs hah.
So! Now we must make the wall 6 clicks tall. This could have been done right off the bat just by lowering the guide wall by 6 clicks instead of 8.
Now we can see the new sunken room height. I went ahead and created the stairs from the first floor to this sunken floor as well.
Now you can also create the stairs from the sunken second floor to the third floor and from the third floor to the fourth.
Lastly I just furnished a bit. These sunken rooms can be utilized as any kind of room. You can build walls, half walls and fences around them. They are also the technique you utilize to create multilevel stairs (which you can see we did here).
First there is a video tutorial I created in case some of you like this method, let me know and I can work on videos for the rest.
Walk-Out Basements
And for those of you who like to read here is the written tutorial -
- First let’s start by building a foundation over where we imagine our house will be and where we imagine the walk-out basement will be. In this tutorial we will focus on a walk-out basement in the backyard, however, you can also build one in the frontyard or the sides, anything you can imagine really.
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- Next we are going to cut out some foundation where we will create the walk-out basement.
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- Next build 3 levels of stairs by just clicking on the ground. Note that throughout this entire tutorial CFE is set to true. You won’t see the outline of the stairs like you do when you normally build, you will just see a square, but that is okay, just click it and a small set of stairs will be built. Three of these small stairs are equivalent to 12 clicks, or the exact height of a wall. This is to ensure that the wall we build next will be at the same height as the foundation. (Note two stairs are shown here, the third will be shown in the next image).
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- Next you can level off a small area of the ground.
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- After this level off a corner.
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- Finally level off the entire area.
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- You can now delete the stairs.
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- And lastly level off the area again.
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- Now we can build walls as we choose. These will become the rooms of the walk-out basement. Note that I left 1 tile of foundation on each side. You can leave more, but do not leave less as you need the 1 tile to cover the incline of the ground.
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- There you see it, a basic walk-out basement with foundation borders on all sides.
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- Now let’s imagine you wanted to create a natural border instead. To do so, delete a section of foundation as seen.
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- Then just utilize the smooth terrain tool to even out the area. Now you can see the walk-out basement with a natural wall border.
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- Now I am just going to color it in a bit so you can see better how it might look.
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- Lastly, throw in some walls so you might see how it looks with a house above.
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- I threw in two images here of one of my creations Maison Chouette, which features a walk-out basement just so you can see some of the things you can do with a walk-out basement.
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As always, thanks for reading ☺
- You can start on a flat lot as seen here or you can start on uneven terrain, it makes no difference for this technique.
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- Start by raising some terrain by however many clicks you would like your ground to be. I chose 8.
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- Level off an area for how big you would like the entrance hall of your house to be.
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- From there, create a basement at this new height. I covered the entire area, but you can of course make the basement smaller. Just make certain one side (the front) of the basement reaches the edge.
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- It should look like this.
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- Now CFE false.
- After this build a basement from the ground level and connect it to the front of the raised basement.
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- The lower basement will create a curve underground as so.
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- From here you can build a front wall for your house, where you can throw a door later on.
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- Now we are going to level off some of the terrain in the front so we can see the front wall above ground.
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- After this you want to relevel the area behind the front wall.
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- Now we are going to level an area for the entrance walkway. You must leave one tile unleveled on each side.
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- This is going to make the ground above uneven so level that off.
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- After that you want to level off 2-3 tiles to either side of the front of the walkway so you can create stairs for the entire length, in this case 8.
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- It should look like this.
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- Again this is going to create uneven ground above, so level it off.
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- Now we are going to utilize the first advanced basement technique which is the void created by underground stairs. Anytime build stairs in a basement that is less than normal wall height, you will get a 4 tile long void above ground for the length of your stairs. Knowing this, you are going to create stairs that are exactly as wide as your front entrance. If you have an entrance larger than 8 tiles, you can utilize extra stairs. The stairs must be exactly 4 tiles away from the front wall so the void they create is exact.
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- It is going to look like this above. Notice the void that was created reaches exactly to the front wall.
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- To fix the uneven ground above we are going to need to level the terrain in the basement to the old low height as so.
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- Now because we couldn’t level outside the boundaries of the basement doing the above created a level beyond what we could use. Thus we are now going to leavel one tile back to the normal floor height.
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- It should look like this now.
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- Again this is going to create uneven ground above ground so level off the ground above.
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- Now the next task is to create side walls that curve like a hill or mountain might. In order to do this I am going to use two tiles, although you can use more. So I am going to level off an extra tile in the basement by the front wall.
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- As you can see here this is going to create an extra tile I can then curve.
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- To do so I am going to just use clicks with the lower terrain tool. You can of course also create a straight line using exact click numbers and the level terrain tool (see the guide on basic wall curving if you do not understand). As you can see in the following image I already curved the left wall. In order to curve the right in the same manner I am going to lower the terrain at the indicated location by two clicks.
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- Now I am going to create another layer to the curve by lowering the terrain at the next location by another 2 clicks.
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- It should now look like this. If you had leveled off more tiles earlier, you can create extra degrees to your curve if you wanted.
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- Now we can level some terrain around the house so we can form the hill or mountain area. For this you want to set CFE to true so you do not mess with the basement structure.
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- You want to make certain to also level the terrain around the front wall to create a ceiling.
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- It should now look like this.
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- I started to soften the terrain a bit but as you can see in this next image, you cannot soften or lower terrain on the areas where there are basement walls when CFE is set to true.
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- So now we are going to level off some extra terrain so we can soften the edges.
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- Now soften the terrain around the edges again.
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- Now you are going to notice some uneven ground around the sides. Set CFE to false again for this and level a single tile back to ground level as so.
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- You might have noticed by now that the front area is dark, so feel free to toss some lights on the front wall so you can see it above ground.
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- As I mentioned in Chez Hobbit, the lights underground won’t be seen above ground. Only build mode objects and not buy mode objects will show.
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- Now I am going to just color the hill or mountain a bit.
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- You might notice the hill or mountain is a bit flat so now I am going to create some texture. As you see in the next image, sometimes the front wall goes dark, but to fix this just go down a story and back, like you would with windows that get covered by a wall when you use moveobjects on.
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- That’s it for technique 1!
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- Ok now onto technique two. Instead of starting over, I am just going to level everything hah. I know… lazy right…
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- Now instead of stairs in the front, we are going to create the stair void in the back.
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- You now are going to create basement at ground level on all sides so that every side has the same downward curve.
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- This is what you are left with.
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- As you can see I didn’t turn off autorailing so we are going to go down and delete the rails on the stairs.
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- Now we are going to utilize the second advanced basement technique. Whenever you delete a section of basement with a curved floor it cannot rebuild the wall that was there.
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- Now level off the area of the basement to the stair’s level.
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- It is going to look like this.
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- We are again going to level some floor on the sides of the stairs so there is an even area the width of the stairs.
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- Now create a wall around the stairs.
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- As you can see this wall will show above.
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- Now create a wall above ground in the same way. You can see the two walls collide and create that weird effect.
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- Now go ahead and create some foundation away from the basement.
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- Now level off the new wall height to foundation height.
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- You can also level the uneven ground in the front.
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- Now lower the ground in front a bit to show more of the basement, I chose 4 clicks.
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- You can also delete the extra basement in the front (to make it cleaner) so it looks like this.
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- Now level off the area of the basement to the new lowered height.
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- Now level the above ground wall back to the foundation height. Notice that I raised the foundation by 2 clicks because I started with a basement that was not on ground level.
- Go ahead and throw the windows you like onto the front wall.
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- As you see above ground the wall we created is going to block the windows.
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- Thus we are going to go ahead and close off that room with a fourth wall so we can create flooring on the roof. Then level the wall back to foundation height.
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- Now you can go ahead and delete the wall above ground where it collides with the basement below. As you might have guessed the basement below shows instead so it still looks like one smooth wall!
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- Now color the walls in the basement.
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- One last time level the flooring (roof floor) back to foundation height.
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- You are left with this.
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- You can level the terrain to make it smooth and then soften it.
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- I was just kidding before! Leveling the terrain means we need to level the floor back to foundation height again! Yay…
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- This is what is left.
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- I am now just going to color the walls and ground so it is clearer.
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- Note that you can also create the above ground wall to be smaller than the area of the basement. This way you can hide some extra basement. You can hide the awkward indent around the basement using a techniques like rocks or fauna or anything you can think of really.
- That’s it for the advanced utilizations of basements tutorial. Have fun and enjoy!
The Furious Swan
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7789240
Tower Yonkori
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7789236
The Zononc Family
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7789232
Enjoy
http://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=7818471
I would recommend reading the guides in order, but the last 3 guides are actually simpler and you could likely do them without understanding the full depth of CFE, if you wanted to
Thank you for the kind words btw!
How great is this thread??
I will bookmark for sure
Once I feel capable enough, I will give it a try.
Thanks for sharing.