Please select this Lot!!

Step-2

Then, change Lot Type "Residential"

Step-3

Click on the " Bulldozer" icon.

Step-4

Then, come and click on the "Empty House"

Step-5

Say "OK" to the pop icon!!

Step-6

As you can see in the picture, lot is empty!!

Step-7

Now, click on the empty homes section.
Choose beach house here and "Place Copy" icon and provide confirmation..

Step-8

Pleace this empty house land..

Step-9

As you can see in the image area of land and house together, and settled compliance..

Step-10

Lot section to "Rotate" the arrow in the icon, then "Select accept" and insert your family home..

Choose a nice large lot to build your boat on. You’ll need it to be big so you can create a nice lake around your boat. I’ll be using 467 Farmer Valley Road in Riverview. Once you enter the lot, you’ll need to flatten it with the Flatten Lot button in the terrain tools menu.

Step 2

Now, you need to cover the entire lot in water. It doesn’t matter about the depth, we’ll adjust this in a minute.

Step 3

You need the depth of the water to be deep enough so you can’t see the terrain paints, but not too deep. Roughly one storey deep is good. Change the depth of an area in one corner to get it right.
Now you need to flatten the bottom of your lake. Using the Level Terrain tool, drag from the corner with the correct depth to the opposite one.

Step 4

Now, decide on the shape and size of your boat. Build an island a little larger than that size, and flatten it with the Leven Terrain tool.

Step 5

Build the basic outline shape of your boat on the island with the Foundation tool. Once that’s done, you must press Shift + Ctrl + C and enter the cheat “constrainfloorelevation false” into the console.

Step 6

Now, in a similar way to steps 2,3 & 4, lower the island down into the water, submersing the foundation in water. When you flatten the bottom of the lake, the top of the foundation should pop back up above water.

Step 7

Now we need to get the top of the foundation at the right level; just above the water is about right. For this, we’ll need to build a sort of ‘Scaffolding’ at the side of the lake. At the side, you need to flatten out the bottom of the lake, high enough to let a piece of foundation just poke out of the water.

Step 8

Using the Level Terrain Tool, level from the piece of foundation ‘scaffolding’ across to the boat. Then, flatten all of the foundation so it’s all at the correct level. Now we’re ready to build on top of our boat base.

Step 9

Now you can start to build the upper part of your boat. Build the basic outline and interior rooms first.

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Do not submit any files that are not your own creations, unless you have consent from the original artist. You should also be sure not to use other creator's bases for your own work without gaining their permission first, and properly crediting them. Any submitters sending work that is not rightfully their own may have all of their work removed from TSR and be banned from submitting in the future

By submitting files to us you are giving us (The Sims Resource) permission to host those files permanently and to be distributed via any media (electronic or physical). Files sent in a different format then those specified above may not be used on the site due to the amount of work involved building previews and correcting errors. If you want your work featured here, please take the time to submit it properly.

Introduction

With a new game comes new custom content - and new methods of creating that custom content. TS3 introduces what may be a new concept to you: Multipliers. Multipliers are an image that is, as the name suggests, multiplied against the pattern being used. The lightness and/or darkness of the multiplier determines where shadows and highlights appear.

Multipliers can be drawn by hand, which involves a lot of work – or they can be created automatically in some 3D programs in a process known as “baking”. During the baking process, the mesh is rendered with shading that you would find in the real world and then the shadows are “baked” onto a texture in accordance with the UV Map.

Creating a UV Map that can be baked to can be a hassle due to the specifics of how the baked image is created. When creating shading by hand, similar faces can be overlapped and you can draw some generic shading that will work for all of the faces. When a multiplier is baked, it’s very important that faces do NOT overlap. The 3D program generates a shadow specifically made for each face, and ONLY that face. When two faces overlap and share the same space, the program tries to create each shadow in the same texture space – which it can’t – so you just end up with a big mess, rather than one shadow that works for multiple faces.

Once you have your mesh made and UV Mapped (make sure to note there are no overlapping faces!), baking the shadow map is quite simple. I’m going to assume you have already made your mesh in some other program (or even in Blender, if you know how) and have it properly UV Mapped and ready to go. If you made your mesh in another program, export it out as .obj now to somewhere you can easily find it.

Upon opening Blender, the screen you are presented with is two windows – a 3D window on top that should have nothing but a cube and a light, and a window on the bottom that is filled with buttons. In the 3D window, the first thing to do is press “Delete” on your keyboard, then click OK to get rid of the cube.

File > Import > Wavefront (.obj). Browse to where you exported your mesh to, select it, and click import. You will be presented with a box that looks like this:

Setting up the Scene

Adjust the settings so the dialog looks like the one above, (Click “Smooth Groups”, change “Clamp Scale” to 0, and turn off “Image Search”) and then click import. Your mesh should now be in the 3D view (although it will appear to be facing the wrong way, this doesn’t matter.)

A quick rundown of how to move your mesh around and rotate it – click and drag with middle mouse button to rotate the view; hold shift + middle mouse button to pan the view. The scroll wheel controls zooming in and out.

Look for a dark gray line between the windows that, when the mouse passes over, changes to a double arrow cursor.

Viewing UV Map and Mesh together

While hovering over that line with the double arrow cursor, right click on that line and choose “Split Area.” A gray line will follow your mouse now, get the line in the middle of the top view port and left click. You should now have two 3D views.

Look in the bottom left-hand corner of one of the windows for a button that looks like a grid. (I’m going to choose the right-hand viewport). Click the grid button, and from the menu that comes up, choose “UV/Image Editor”. One window should now be your 3D view, and the other should be an empty gray UV grid. Press “Tab” on your keyboard, and your mesh should turn pink in the 3D view while the UV Map appears in the UV window. If nothing happens upon pressing tab, click in the 3D window, press “A” then right-click your mesh again to reselect it – then try pressing tab again.

In the UV Editor window, click the “Image” menu and choose “New.” In the dialog that comes up, change the size of the image to 512x512 (or 1024x1024 if you really need the extra room), then click okay. Your UV map should now be on a 512x512 (or 1024x1024) pure black texture.

Look at the bottom panel now, with the buttons. Towards the top of that panel there will be a series of 6 buttons in one group, and 5 in a second group. Click the 5th button of the second series, it should have a little globe icon on it and be labeled as “World”.

Enabling Ambient Occlusion

Upon clicking the World button, you will be presented with LOTS of buttons and sliders and numbers. Ignore them, and look for a tab that says “Amb Occ” and click it. It should be in the third set of panels out of the four. Once you click it, click the button that says “Ambient Occlusion”. Change the “Samples” value from 5 to 10.

Baking the texture

Looking back at the two series of buttons, click the 6th button in the first series “Scene”, or press F10. Where you found the “Amb Occ” tab before, now look for a tab labeled “Bake” in the same place.

Look for a button on that tab that says “Ambient Occlusion” (second button down on the right side of that tab) and select it.

Click the large “Bake” button. It might look like the program is about to crash, but if you wait a few seconds it will start baking, and filling in your UV Map with the appropriate shading and shadows.

Saving the Multiplier

In the UV Editor window, click the “Image” menu again. Click “Save As”. Browse to where you want to save it, type in the name you want to save it as, but DON’T click save yet. Look at the bottom of that viewport for a box that has “Targa” in it. Click that box and change it to JPEG. Now you can save it to the location of choice, preferably somewhere easy to find.

Because Blender doesn’t have the option to save as .DDS, you will have to open the JPEG you just saved in your graphics program and save it out as DDS to make it usable in workshop.

The default download option is to download the Sims3Pack file (several files if a Set) holding the custom content as a ZIP. This is done by clicking the button with the green arrow. Once you have downloaded the ZIP, you have two options:

1) Double-click the Sims3Pack file(s) in the ZIP to install it immediately.

2) Extract the file(s) to the "My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Downloads" folder. From there they will be installed the next time you launch the game.

Sims3Pack Download

Individual items can be downloaded directly as Sims3Pack files, and with this method you can either...

1) Put the Sims3Pack file in the "My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\Downloads" folder, and it will be installed the next time you launch the game.

2) You can execute the file (double-click it). If you have the TSR Launcher installed it will open in that application, otherwise it will be installed directly.

TSR Launcher Download (only for Sets, subscriber only)

Note: This option requires the TSR Launcher to be installed

For Sims 3 Sets, subscribers get the option to download the full Set in a special format which can be opened by the TSR Launcher, making it very convenient to manage all of the files in the Set in a single step. The association between the special .tsr file format and the TSR Launcher is normally done when installing the TSR Launcher.

Add to Basket (subscriber only)

Clicking this button adds the item to the download basket, or in the case of Sets, the Sets individual items.

Subscriber-only

This image indicates that you need to buy a subscription to be able to download this item.

Kudos Item

Items with this button can be bought using Kudos.

Download Basket Indicator

Click the Download Basket icon at the top of the page to open the basket for downloading.

• TSR Workshop 0.8.7 or later (http://www.thesimsresource.com/workshop)
You will need TSR Workshop for importing/exporting your meshes and textures and exporting your final work as a .sim3package or .package. This tool doesn’t make meshes, you need a 3d application for that.

• A graphics editor capable of supporting DDS (I’ll be using Photoshop CS3)
You’ll need a graphics editor to draw your hair textures and save the textues in .dds format. This is the only format The Sims 3 recognizes. You can’t just save your textures in .bmp or .jpg.

• Milkshape 1.8.5 or later
You’ll need Milkshape mainly for bone assignments and because Workshop has Milkshape plugins to export – import .wso files. This format can hold bone assignment information. But for modelling I strongly recommend to use a more professional 3d application like 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema 4d. It doesn’t mean you can’t mesh in Milkshape. But Milkshape has very limited tools to help you get your work done faster, so you’d probably spend weeks in Milkshape to create a smooth and beautiful hair mesh. Trust me, it’s a lot of work!

• CrazyBump (http://www.crazybump.com/) (optional)
This program is amazing . You can make your bump maps, specular and normal maps within seconds with this tool. Try it!

Step 1

So, first things first. Install TSR Workshop then go to C:\Program Files\The Sims Resource\TSR Workshop\Extras\Milkshape Plugins and grab the two files named msTSRWorkshopExport.dll and msTSRWorkshopImport.dll. Now go to C:\Program Files\MilkShape 3D 1.8.5 and paste them there. Now your milkshape has TSR Workshop plugins!

Step 2

Now fire up TSR Workshop. Hit Create New Project > Hair > Age > Sex > Clothing Category and pick a hair from there.

Pick a hair that suits your new custom mesh best. If you’re planning to make a long hair pick a long one from the list so you can study how their vertices are assigned to bones and copy them. You can also pick a hair that has accessories like hair clips or hats if your new mesh has accessories too. This will make things easier later.

Step 3

Name your Project, find a unique name for the unique indentifier (for example creatorname_hair_01) find a name for the title and write a description. Since I’m too lazy to fill all those spaces I just paste Ulker_hair_00x to all of the spaces. It doesn’t matter what you write really. Just make sure the unique identifier is somewhat unique!

Step 4

Let’s just save our project in .wrk format and close Workshop. We’ll mesh hair now! Open your favorite 3d application and import one of the example bodies. I’ll be using 3ds Max 2010 and importing the adult female body in this tutorial. But you can do the same things I’ll be doing in another 3d application too. Now group the face, scalp and the body together and freeze them so you don’t move their verts by accident.

To submit a tutorial you first have to work ‘offline’. This means you should first work in a program like Microsoft Word, Wordpad or OpenOffice Writer and not on the website.

Think up a subject. Deciding what to (not) write about is an important step. Make sure your subject is not too broad because that may get too confusing for the user.

When you've got your subject I personally find it useful to write bullet points of what I want to put in the tutorial. This helps me when I collect images (3rd step), save the images with names like 01.jpg-99.jpg. If you will have more than 10 images use 0 before 1 (01, 02, 09, etc)

So the next logical step is to write the text and decide where to place the images. If you are using Word you can also place the images in the text to figure out the best placement.

Placement of the images

While placing images left, right and center may look pretty from an artistic point. In my opinion, images should be placed to the right of the corresponding paragraph or centered below it when it is too big for placing on the right.

It is important to know which paragraphs have images and where they are placed. It will save you a lot of headaches later on.

Step 1: Create a Basement

If you know how to make a basement, feel free to skip ahead to Step 2, on page three. Meanwhile, if you find yourself saying, “Basement? I can have a Basement???” Read on…

Open the building tools menu. Select a set of stairs, any set will do, one wide is best. Drop one set of stairs three steps down.

Lay a second set of stairs just like the first, coming off at a right angle from the bottom "landing" of the first set of stairs...

Build the third and final set of stairs like the second, at a right angle from the bottom of the second set of stairs...

Now that you’ve gotten the stairs in place, it’s time to get rid of them! Hehehe… Use the hammer tool to delete the stairs.

Open the level terrain tool and place your cursor over the deepest square.

Use the cursor to encompass the area where your basement will be located.

Let the terrain drop, and...a basement begins to take shape!

1. Select Shadow Mesh

As you can see, the sunshadow mesh isn't yet adjusted.

Change to the mesh tab where you've previously imported the high and the low detail mesh. From the dropdown menu select Shadow high level of detail.

2. Press Generate Shadow Mesh Button

The Generate shadow mesh button almost next to the dropdown menu should now become active.

Click it to open the Select MLOD window. You have to tell TSR Workshop what should be all included in this shadow mesh from the High level of detail mesh. What generally should be excluded is the groundshadow mesh (you can recognize it on the low vertices/faces count). When you're done selecting the meshes, click on OK.

3. Done

The newly generated sunshadow should now become visible in the 3D Preview. If not, make sure you are in the correct LOD mode and have sunshadows showing activated . In the Mesh Tab you've also got a rotation slider available so you can check how the sunshadow looks from different angles.

4. Repeat for Low LOD

Now repeat step 1 and 2 for the Shadow low level of detail. This time you choose the meshes from the Low level of detail mesh in the Select MLOD dialog.

Step 1 – Loading TSR Workshop

Go to your Start Menu > All Programs and load the TSR Workshop.

Step 2 – Creating a New Project

Navigate to the top left of the Workshop and click on the ‘Create new Project’.

In the new window that will pop out in front of you select Makeup/Facial overlay and click the button ‘Next’ in the right bottom corner.

As I said before I’m going to make an eyeshadow so I’ll choose afMakeupEyeshadowSmoky and click ‘Next’

In the next screen you will be asked to give your project a name and some additional details. Although it is very important to give your projects a unique identifier and fill in all the other boxes, we’re actually only going to use this project to get a file we will need – we won’t be exporting anything for the game from here. So for now, just click ‘Next’.

Finally your new project will load and you will be able to see the eyeshadow on the model in the left window and project details in the right one.

When you click on the ‘Texture’ tab you will see that under ‘Textures’ there are ‘Face Overlay’ and ‘Face Specular’. The important one for us is ‘Face Overlay’, which determine where the makeup is placed on the face.

Probably by now you also noticed that at the bottom, under colors, there is only one color that can be changed. That means you won’t be able to create a multicolor makeup starting from the eyeshadow you have opened.

However, this is still a very important step – as I mentioned earlier we’re just needed to find an image file – the face overlay is the image file we needed here, so now we’re going to export it.

Step 1:

Build a box 2 levels high

Step 1a:

Build a base (1x1) on the side with walls (1x1) on top of it. NOTE: Don’t forget to remove the auto roofs.

Step 2:

Enter the cheat constrainfloorelevation false (CTRL + SHFT + C + constrainfloorelevation false)

From top of your foundation, flatten the top level of your house-to-be with the terrain leveling tool (a floor tile can also be used for this).

NOTE: You need to pull the leveling tool (or floor tiles) FROM the foundation TO the opposite side of the house, not the other way around.

Step 3:

This is how it should look like. I have colored the walls in different colors so you may see what happened to the walls.

Step 4:

Now on the top floor, build a wall box inside the short walls (see the pictures), this will be on top of the green walls. This will pull the walls on the sides of the house up to the regular height, and that made the whole trick (the attic).

TECHNICAL: It will be much easier to use the “create room” wall than the “create wall” command.

Step 5:

Try adding roof. Using the ‘red’ walls as your base for your roof.

Step 6:

As you can see in the picture, the walls is higher than the roof, adjust it using the ‘adjust roof type’ slide, to your desired roof height.

This is how it should look like:

Using different colors of paint, so you’ll see what happened to the walls (see image). Your attic is already complete by this time, you may put windows at the front and back of the house. But if you want we may also add dormers. This will also enlarge your space. So let’s continue to the next step.

Step 7:

To make your attic/space more beautiful, let’s add dormers. Proceeding from Step 6, make a box for your dormer. See the image. Make sure that your cheat (constrainfloorelevation false) is still ON.

This is what it should look like with the main roof;

Step 8:

I painted the walls white (the uneven wall) and black (the main dormer wall). As you can see the ‘white walls’ isn’t nice to look at so we’ll delete it. Let’s remove the uneven wall on the side of the dormer. Using the sledgehammertool, smash the white walls.

Step 9:

Let’s add the roof of the dormer. You may add one or two dormers, depending on what you want. In this image, I made 2 dormers.

Step 10:

After adding roof to your dormer, this is what it should look like with the main roof.

Step 11:

Don’t forget to turn your cheat off “constrainfloorelevation true”. This is what your attic will look like: (the size varies to your own desire, you may change it if you want)

EXTRA:

If you want to change the height of the dormer roof, here’s how:

1. Use the sledgehammer tool to smash the MAIN roof;
2. Adjust the roof of the dormer on your desired height using the ‘adjust roof type’ slide.
3. Then click on ‘undo’ or press CTRL Z, to add the main roof back.
4. Change the color of the roof if you want and don’t forget to add stairs.

Step 12: Make your house beautiful by adding plants, paint and fences if you like. Now this is how your cottage or small house should look like after adding the finishing touches. Enjoy making your small houses bigger and make your roof usable. Happy Simmin’ !!

Introduction

Creating a waterfall can be a challenge, but the view they add to a property makes the time and effort well worthwhile.

Step 1

First of all, I like to start with a level lot. Open the build menu and select the shovel icon/terrain tool. Level the entire lot, including the land beneath the mailbox and trashcan. If you choose, paint the lot with ground cover.

(I like to play with a waterfall that obeys the natural laws of gravity, i.e. water flows down, not to the side or up. At this point, I build a small pond, just to look at the water in motion. I make note of which direction the water’s current is flowing, in order to build the waterfall with that orientation in mind. I then delete the “test” pond and begin to create my actual waterfall.)

Step 2

Next, open the raise terrain tool and use it to create your hummocks, hills and mountains. This is when you decide where you would like your waterfall to be placed, and the way in which the height of the lot will look in general during play.

Step 3

Open the soften terrain tool and smooth out any sharp corners on your hills, try to make them look weather-worn and natural.

Step 4

Now it's time to add the water. Open the water tool and place a pond at the bottom of your hills. Think of real ponds. Try to avoid too many sharp corners.

Step 5

The key is to make sure that wherever you decide to place the waterfall, the “base” of the waterfall is where the pond is the deepest.

Step 6

Return to the build menu and purchase one or two columns. (I find that more than a couple of columns can be difficult to find and retrieve later.)

Step 7

Simultaneously press and hold the Control, Shift, C keys to open the cheat menu and type: moveobjects on Pick up one of the columns and place it in the water at the "bottom" of the waterfall. The land will fall away to reveal water. Just remember: Always turn off the cheat code before exiting the lot.

Step 8

You can also hold down the Alt key for more precise control during the positioning of your columns.

Step 9

As the columns are placed, more water will appear to “cascade” down the slopes. Don’t worry if there is a bit of land exposed at the bottom of the waterfall that can be camouflaged later.

Step 10

Continue to place your columns until you have a waterfall you’re happy with. Be patient. Don't rush. Take the time to be "picky."

Step 11

Retrieve the columns and delete them.

Programs we will be using

TSR Workshop
Adobe CS2 or higher
DDS Plugins for Adobe

BlackGarden’s Tutorial will also be very useful if you don’t know about Adobe’s pen tool:
Extracting Sims and Objects from Screenshots

Step 1

You should have already meshed your plant and have your UV map handy. Make sure your map is the size of the dds files from workshop for this tutorial. The size of the dds we will be using is 256 X 256. Then import your meshes to WS. Delete all Variation Files by choosing them and in turn hitting the red X until you only have one file.

Step 2

These are our dds files we will be working with. We will not be exporting the mask for this tutorial, we won’t need it.
In turn export Overlay, Multiplier, and Specular naming them and placing them in a file you can find easily.
Open Adobe CS2 or higher. Drag, in turn, your Overlay, Multiplier, and Specular into Adobe

Step 3

Now you will make a blank 256 X 256 file to work with. Not necessary but an easier way to make your files. Make it black.

I’m going to take my UV map and place it on the blank file Like so:

Step 4

Now we will position our plant and other non recolorable images on the map.

Step 5

Now delete the UV map, flatten image and you should have this:

Step 6

Now we have our working “Model” for the rest of our dds files.

Now we’ll work on our Overlay First

Copy this “Model” to your overlay file. Ctrl A, ctrl C this file and then ctrl V to the overlay. Your overlay now has its base.

Ah, but your overlay needs a new alpha file. So back to your “Model”. Duplicate the main layer of the model file. Using your wand tool you will select all black parts on the duplicate layer and right click select inverse. Using your pencil at the highest setting and making sure your main color swatch is white click on your selected image. You should have something that looks like this:

Step 7

Now we want to ctrl A and ctrl C to copy this layer to our Overlay Alpha. So lets do that now, ctrl V to paste and you should have an alpha layer for your overlay that looks like this:

Step 8

Flatten layer and save as a DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha. Overlay is now done.

ONWARD! Now would be the time to grab a cup of coffee or a Soda…..So I’ll wait for a minute.

Ok minute over. Now we will work on the Multiplier.

The first thing we want to do is go back to our “Model”. Make sure you deleted the Alpha File we made for our overlay. You should now be back to this for your “Model”:

Step 9

Now we want to make a multiplier file. So again duplicate your “Model” layer. Now go to Image/Adjustments/Desaturate. Now your “Model” should have a layer that looks like this:

Step 10

As before you will copy this layer and paste it over the multiplier file. Now we get into the tricky parts……Yes what makes you think it can’t get any more complicated? Hmmmm?

Take your UV map and place it on top of both the Multiplier layer then reduce visibility to 35%. You should have something that looks like this:

Step 11

Now see how we still have the pot to do? Well we are going to hand draw around the pot with a grey layer. So make a 256 X 256 Grey layer to work with and save it. Now place that saved layer over this multiplier and reduce visibility to 45% so you can see the UV map underneath. Rastersize the layer in case you didn’t know you had to do that. Right Click on the layer, Rastersize. You should now have this:

Step 12

Now we will cut around the pot using our pen tool. If you don’t know how to do this I suggest you read BlackGarden’s Tutorial first found here:

Extracting Sims and Objects from Screenshots

Now we will delete the extra layer and the UV map, then flatten so that we are left with this:

Step 13

Now we Could get into all the technical stuffs about shading in your multiplier because the pot part does need some shading, but that is not the purpose of this tutorial. So we won’t :0).

So Onward, now we need an alpha layer for the multiplier. Yes on plants the Multiplier has an alpha layer. So now we will go back to our “Model”. Select the black parts with your wand tool and then select inverse so that your parts are selected. Going to your pencil tool again we want to make white the parts to the plant. Ending up with something that looks like this again:

Step 14

Now place our UV map over top of this file. Reduce visibility to 35% so you can see underneath the UV map. Now comes the most important part or making our leaf totally invisible around the leaf in game. You are going to trace your UV map around the entire leaf surface of the mesh part with your pen tool (Again referring to BlackGardens Tutorial). Like this:

Step 15

Notice how I drew a little bit larger than my mesh map. Now we will layer via cut just that section. Delete the UV map and place a white background layer underneath the cut out. Flatten and it should look like this:

Step 16

Now you will copy and paste this to the alpha layer of the Multiplier and your channel should look like this:

Step 17

Now save to DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha. Your Multiplier is now done.

Take a break, Walk around and clear your head, the hard parts are now done. We have one more thing left to do. The Specular.

We’re going to go back to our “Model” mesh and clear off all the editing we have done thus far. So Edit/Step backwards until you get back to where our “Model” looks like this:

Step 18

Now we want to copy this to our Specular file and then place our UV map on top with a 35% visibility so we can see below. Cut out Place a white layer under your UV map and cut out your planter part like this again using the pen tool:

Step 19

Now save to DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha. Your Multiplier is now done.


Take a break, Walk around and clear your head, the hard parts are now done. We have one more thing left to do. The Specular.

We’re going to go back to our “Model” mesh and clear off all the editing we have done thus far. So Edit/Step backwards until you get back to where our “Model” looks like this:

Step 20

Add a totally black alpha layer and then save as a DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp | interpolated alpha. Now we are ready for import back into Workshop.

So in turn import each file into Workshop, Overlay, Multiplier, and Specular. Your plant should look something like this:

I will show you how easy it is to make your very own custom painting by your favorite artist using one of the very lovely frames that already exists in your game.

What You will Need:

• TSR Workshop (8.7 or latest release)

• Graphics editing program (I will be using Photoshop CS3 (a good working knowledge is a plus) or the program of your choice.

• DDS plug-ins for Photoshop, current version (installed)
(http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.htm). Gimp and Paint Shop Pro also have plug-ins available on the internet.

• Good quality image of your choice or you can use mine. Just right click and save it. But, I do ask that you only use it for tutorial purposes as I’ve already uploaded it for publication on TSR.

I’ll be using one of my favorites, The Waterlily Pond with the Japanese Bridge, 1899 by Claude Monet.

Section 1 - Creating a New Project

We’ll start by opening Workshop (WS) and clicking on Create New Project

In the Create a new project screen select Object and then click Next

You will now find yourself on the Object Clone screen. In the Object By Category section on the left, select Décor/Wall Art. You will see workshop display all the paintings in the game. Remember the only paintings available to clone are the ones with a frame. I’ve selected the Painting still life for my painting. Click Next and you’re on your way.

At this point the Project details screen will pop up. Here you will type in your Project Name, Title and Description. When you are finished with all of your information go ahead and click Next

Your project has now been created and we are ready to customize it. As you can see from the screenshot, your project is opened on the Project tab. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the sections. It’s in this tab where you can change your project name and description if you find any mistakes and in game categories.

When you’re finished with the Project tab go ahead and click on the Textures tab. You will see a dropdown box called Variation. If you click on it you will see exactly that, how many frame variations (colors) this particular mesh has. There are 3 for the Painting Still Life. Make sure the first one is selected and move on to the next section.

There are several tutorials discussing how to make patterns for the Create-A-Style tool in Sims 3 that are helping many people make great patterns. However, I started out as a total beginner, and was still fumbling with issues such as ‘why channels?’ and ‘how do I add an alpha?’
when other people were seemingly outputting a pattern a minute!!!

If you too are floundering and feel like you know nothing, hopefully this tutorial will help you. After you’ve succeeded with this one, you’ll be able to move on to more advanced stuff. This tutorial is meant for people who still have no idea what they’re doing and need to know WHY they're doing this or that. So it DOES go on a bit. But that's me!

Your pattern

I’m not going to make a pattern from scratch (because that would assume you can paint stuff)! Instead, and because I can't paint stuff either, I’m going to convert an existing texture using a basic select tool to split a brick pattern across three channels (and an alpha) to make the English Victorian brick pattern shown on the right. You can use any pattern (including my brick pattern).

Whatever you use, ensure you start with a pattern that has easy sections to cut out and divide, and is sized 256 pixels wide by 256 pixels high.

Create the base shape/ room where you want to create your halfwall. You can create it on a foundation like i did, but you don't have to. This also works on groundlevel. Although, if you go with this way, your room needs to be 2 story's high.

When you have done this, press CTRL+SHIFT+C on your keyboard to open the cheat window and enter this cheat:
ConstrainFloorElevation false

Now go to the buildmode and select any stair, with or without rail, make sure it's set to 1.

Place first stair

Place the Modular stair on the ground and move it a little with the mousebutton clicked so that it will move into the ground. Let the mousebutton go.

Place second stair

On the landing of this first stair, place the start for your second stair and repeat last action. By placing these 3 stairs, you have lowered the ground by 8 clicks. That is half a wall. a full wall is 16 clicks high. So by this you can messure how high your halfwall would be.

Create bigger area

Go to the flatten tool in your buildmode and drag from the lowest created point and just make your workarea a little bigger.

Place new wall

now create a 1x1 either foundation or room. This depends on what you choose for your first room, where you want your halfwall. If you've build that on a foundation, you need to add a foundation here too. If not, then just place a wall. with a second story.

Create to be Halfwall

Next create the to be halfwall in your room/ showroom and go up one level (buildlevel) Please take note; do not let you halfwall connect to any of the outerwalls. Make sure that there is at least 2 tiles between the walls and to be halfwall.

Create your halfwall

Select the flatten tool again; now drag from the top of your “pilar” outside Onto your to be halfwall. The arrow in the picture is showing the direction you should go.

Warped wall

After you let go you can see your newly created halfwall. You will also notice that the outer wall is pulled down. This we can fix.

Fix your warped wall

select the whole edge along the wall with the flatten tool and let go again.

Fixed wall

You can see your wall is now "corrected" again. Next Change the walls, floors etc. and decorate your room to make your screenshot. please take note that with this method you will not have a ceiling in your screen. So keep that in mind when taking your screenshot.

And you're done!

Now you have finished your halfwall. Take your screen enjoy it. Do not forget to turn off your cheat, you do this by opening the cheatwindow and type ConstrainFloorElevation true.

I wanted to share with you, my own construction method U-Shaped Stairs. We will create a U-shaped stair on a foundation or straight on the ground.

(I would like to thanks to  BlackGarden. for useful tuturial of Creating L-Sahape Stairs.  I used it at my first L-Shape stairs and on this U-Shape stair.)

With foundation: 

1.  At first, create a foundation and a room two floors.. (We need three frames for the U-turn. That's why I've created a room 7x3.)

2.  Count to backwards 7 frames from the corner and make three steps. Now, remove the stairs.

3.  We have turned down terrain. Place one square of foundation and make two floors on the lowest level of terrain. Then, turn to the side. In here, count to backwards 5 frames from the corner and make two steps. Now, remove the stairs.

4.  We have turned down terrain again. Place one square of foundation and make two floors on the lowest level of terrain again.  And now we have to column. We need a cheat. constrainfloorelevation false (Hit ctrl+shift+C and type into the box constrainfloorelevation false and press enter.)

5. Go to the second floor and walls are down. Go to the terrain tools, and choose the level terrain tool. Now drag from the top of your first colomun to the corner.

6. Place one tile of floor at the corner of your stair. Place your stair at the corner.

7. Then, turn to the side. Go to the terrain tools and choose the level terrain tool. Drag from the top of your second colomun to the corner.

8.  Place one tile of floor at the corner. When you place a tile, there been a mistake. Not very important. We can fix it.

9. Go to back the terrain tools and choose the level terrain tool again. Drag from the top of your first colomun to the corner.

10. Ok! That improved. Place your second stair at the corner.

11. Place a tile at the second floor and then place the third stair. Yes, we made a U-Shaped Stair. But it isn't over.

12. We must fix the top. This is easily fixed with "level terrain tool". Go to the terrain tools and choose the level terrain tool. Drag from the high corner to the lowered corner as shown. It fixed!

Now, turn off the cheat "constrainfloorelevation true"  (press ctrl+shift+C, typ constrainfloorelevation true and press enter.)

 Remove outside wall and foundation. Yes, it's over.

On the ground: 

We will use the same method but we will not do foundation. We will start from the ground. 

1.  At first, create a room two floors. (We need three frames for the U-turn. That's why I've created a room 7x3.) 

2.  Count to backwards 7 frames from the corner and make three steps. Now, remove the stairs. We have turned down terrain. Make two floors on the lowest level of terrain. Then, turn to the side. In here, count to backwards 5 frames from the corner and make two steps. Now, remove the stairs.

3. We have turned down terrain again. Make two floors on the lowest level of terrain again.  And now we have two column. We need a cheat. "constrainfloorelevation false" (Hit ctrl+shift+C and type into the box constrainfloorelevation false and press enter.) 

4. Go to the second floor and walls are down. Go to the terrain tools, and choose the level terrain tool. Now drag from the top of your first colomun to the corner. Place one tile of floor at the corner of your stair. Place your stair at the corner.

5. Then, turn to the side. Go to the terrain tools, and choose the level terrain tool. Drag from the top of your second colomun to the corner. Place your second stair at the corner.

 6. Place a tile at the second floor and then place the third stair. Yes, we made a U-Shaped Stair. But it isn't over. We must fix the top. This is easily fixed with "level terrain tool". Go to the terrain tools, and choose the level terrain tool. Drag from the high corner to the lowered corner as shown. It fixed!

7. Now, turn off the cheat "constrainfloorelevation true"  (Hit ctrl+shift+C, typ constrainfloorelevation true and press enter.)

 8. Remove outside wall and foundation. Yes, it's over.

Under Project you can manage the projects name, the description
and others.  Under  the Textures tab you will see the needed textures, which you
have to export as a .dds file for making the costum eyes.
now, click on the textures tab.
→ Textures → Face Overlay








click on Face Overlay on the right site.
click on the little button with the dots.
esport the image wich will pop up in another window.
→ Face Overlay → "... Button" → export

Now, open the exported image in photoshop or another program,
which is able to open a .dds file.
the Eye Image is shown in the left under corner of the Overlay image.
der Overlay Grafik. You can change the Eye you want to do, the rest of the Images has to be white colored.

now, color and change the Image you like. save your changes as a .dds file!

now, go back to the workshop and click to face Overlay again.
open the window by clicking on the button with the dots to import your new eye image.




now, click done to take effect.
→ import → done

under the category
Tint color you will see the colors
of the feline mak.
change the terms to false!
now, your mask won´t longer be orange ;).→ Tint color A|B|C enabled → false



now, go back to your project tab.
give your project a name unter the categories: Title + Description.
now, click  Extras and name your project under the category: Filename
this will be the name for your S3Pack! It´s important to use a name there!





now you can  Export your eyes  to Sims3Pack
 :)
________________________________________

I uploaded my Eye Overlay Image for you,

I think it´s much easier for you to work with it :

|Eye Overlay|

• As we are using a cheat, remember to turn it off
• Always test your bridge with Sims
• Also test your lot on another location as it has been said the bridge doesn’t work properly if the lot is moved.
  

So let’s move on to the building:

Step 1: Build 2 1x1 foundation blocks with an uneven number of tiles between them. Uneven numbers makes the best result.

Step 2: Build another 1x1 foundation block in the middle, 1 tile out on the side. This allows you to place floor tiles between the 2 blocks

Step 3: Drag the floor across and then delete the extra foundation block.

Step 4: Choose some stairs you like and a fence you like. The fence can be added later when you are finished if you prefer that.

Step5: Now use the raise terrain tool with the smallest circular brush and maximum strength and raise the terrain a few clicks 2 tiles from the bridge. Just so you create a small hill.

Step 6: Build a 1x1 foundation block over the hill

Step 7: Now bring up the cheat box and enable the cheat “constrainfloorelevation false”

Use the terrain levelling tool and start on the foundation and drag it over the bridge, leaving 1 tile on each side.

Step 8: The result will be like this.  Remove the foundation you just placed.