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New builders

wmissie0925wmissie0925 Posts: 310 Member
With the new build tools, I'm excited to jump in and see what I can create. I've never been much of a builder and was wondering if all you experienced builders could share tips, useful links, and ideas for getting started. Where are good places to get ideas or just how to start planning the first build? Any help would be appreciated. :)

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  • cutplyr7cutplyr7 Posts: 42 Member
    Look at websites with house plans. That's what I do when I get a new sims game. I use it for the sims 2 and 3 right now. It's really helpful and gives you great ideas. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
  • rosemowrosemow Posts: 163,519 Member
    Hello @wmissie0825 :) I hope that you have lots of fun and enjoy building in sims 4. This is a link to a thread where simmers have shared links to house plan sites that are great to get ideas from .http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/770762/house-plans.
    Happy simming! :)
  • wmissie0925wmissie0925 Posts: 310 Member
    Thank you Rosemow. I would also suggest www.houzz.com. Some suggested it on another thread and I spent way too much time yesterday dreaming over those rooms. :)
  • ruthless_kkruthless_kk Posts: 3,987 Member
    With the new build tools, I'm excited to jump in and see what I can create. I've never been much of a builder and was wondering if all you experienced builders could share tips, useful links, and ideas for getting started. Where are good places to get ideas or just how to start planning the first build? Any help would be appreciated. :)

    Using houseplans to find a look you like and want to re-create can be a good place to start, but I would advise to be very careful about trying to actually copy a real life floor plan. It can lead to a LOT of frustration...especially for new builders....because real life proportions are very different from the proportions in The Sims and you can end up with things looking way too big or just wrong. And there are things builders can do in real life that we cant do with the game.

    I would advise new builders to look at pictures and houseplans as a guide only....figure out what you like...what looks interesting to you. Find something that appeals to you and then use it as a jumping off point for your own creation. There can be a lot of frustration in trying to re-create something exactly and I worry that can lead to giving up or disliking the building process ( which can be so fun!). So dont put that pressure on yourself. Dont beat yourself up if you cant make something that looks exactly like a houseplan or a picture. Make something that has some of those elements, that draws on the framework of a plan...but is your own creation.

    I think that would be more fun and less stressful.

    I had a bunch of building tutorials for The Sims 3 but they got trashed when my pictures on the site got dumped...so I will be creating a few new ones for The Sims 4 in the coming months with some specifics. :)
  • rosemowrosemow Posts: 163,519 Member
    I will look forward to seeing your building tutorials for sims 4 @ruthless_kk :) Thankyou very much for your kind helpfulness to other simmers and the simming community. :)
  • wmissie0925wmissie0925 Posts: 310 Member
    edited August 2014
    @ruthless_kk. Thank you for the advice. Last night I tried playing around with building in the Sims 3 and came up with those issues exactly. I'm not going to give up. My plan was to read up on some building guides. And maybe sit down with some graphing paper and see if I can make it a little more to scale.
  • SparkleSparkle Posts: 1,476 Member
    edited August 2014
    I'd add to what @ruthless_kk says, not only are there some things real builders can do that you can't but house plans often have spaces in them for things you don't need in the sims - like tiny utility rooms (useful once you have washer/dryers but not necessarily before) built in storage and cupboards areas for boilers and the like that just have no place in a sims house. These can take up room you might want for other things or create annoying little empty spaces unless you get creative with them, remove them or some way keep them but make it more relevant for your sims (like placing a wardrobe or bookcase where the built in would be).

    You also have to watch for when they place things next to one another that you can't in the sims (like in earlier sims where placing a toilet right next to a bath could block access to the bath even though it wouldn't in reality).
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  • walkingstickwalkingstick Posts: 4,637 Member
    edited August 2014
    I also agree with Ruthless. I often copy the outside of houses (well the front anyway!) but then I just make up the interior to suit my needs.

    Edit to say that my avi is an example of that.
  • PiplowPiplow Posts: 81 Member
    > @walkingstick said:
    > I also agree with Ruthless. I often copy the outside of houses (well the front anyway!) but then I just make up the interior to suit my needs.

    Same here. Sims have really different priorities to real people so it's not always worth copying the insides of houses, and sometimes it's not possible to without moveobjects.

    Are there any useful sites/videos that show how simmers have made rooms and houses based around multiple skill/hobby objects look nice? As more of a player of the sims I tend to struggle with stuffing my house with all the skill objects, but then the house looks odd with so many strange items.
  • Twiggers849Twiggers849 Posts: 101 Member
    I've used many house plans as inspirations for my builds over the years, mainly because I found trying to create a house on the spot that was practical as well as visually exciting quite difficult. I agree with everything that's been said so far, real house plans can cause immense amounts of frustration when actually creating, and particularly in TS4 with the absence of constrainfloorelevation is going to make many house plans not useful for building from. HOWEVER, I always look at house plans, note down the things that are going to be difficult to create (curved walls, multi unit stairs etc etc) and immediately I begin to think of how I can rearrange the house or how I can adapt it for practicality within the game. Then if you can, roughly draw the plan out again - with your adaptations - and the house basically builds itself.

    - Twiggers
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  • wmissie0925wmissie0925 Posts: 310 Member
    Thank you all for your help. Can't wait to start. I think I will just try to include the features that I really like from the plan I've chosen and then work around those. :)
  • friendsfan367friendsfan367 Posts: 29,362 Member
    if theres a way to bookmark this i have no clue. i might spend alot of time here.
  • rosemowrosemow Posts: 163,519 Member
    if theres a way to bookmark this i have no clue. i might spend alot of time here.

    If you want to bookmark a thread Friendsfan, you press the star button that is on the top right hand side of the thread and it turns yellow. Then the thread is bookmarked, and you can find it again if you press the star symbol that is at the top of the page near your user name,
    I hope that helps :)
  • friendsfan367friendsfan367 Posts: 29,362 Member
    i thought that was there for decoration.actually i never saw it before tonight.
  • LivilivzLivilivz Posts: 206 Member
    I'm looking forward to trying building - my houses were pretty dire in the sims 3. I'm pretty sure even if you lived in a bin you wouldn't want to stay in one of mine.
    santaandtheelves-Copy_zps33ad8a40.png[img][/img]
  • MsPrissy88MsPrissy88 Posts: 3,122 Member
    @Ruthless -- When you were doing your builds, HOW did you place a room on the second floor?? Before you answer, this is my problem...


    When I went to stretch the existing house, I deleted the "flooring" (for lack of better wording) on top. Confused? Ok -- I deleted the roofs, then deleted what was the flooring underneath. Now I can't place any rooms (pre-styled), or try to build a wall. And at the moment, I like what I did to the bottom of the house. I don't want to start over.


    HELP please!!
    Origin ID -- MsPrissySim

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