Tutorial - How to make pool platforms.
A couple of people have been asking about the pool platforms I made in a recent build. So I decided to make a short tutorial about how to do them. They are easy stuff, that anyone can learn to do.
To start with, a pool large enough for a platform, and the area for the platform in the middle. I use 3x3 here for the size of my platform, but once you learn the technique, there really isn't any limit on sizes for them.
Edit: The next couple of steps have changed somewhat if you are running patches after Late Night. See the edit section below for clarification.
Once you have the pool with the section in the middle done, go to the basement tool. Click on one of the corners of the section in the middle. Hold down the "ctrl" key and drag to the opposite corner of the section like this.
When you let go of the mouse button, the walls of the section in the middle of the pool should disappear and it will look like this.
Next, using the basement tool again, drag from one corner to the opposite corner again...
When you release the mouse button you should have a basement underneath that section with gray unfinished walls underneath the water line.
Using the paint, flooring and CASt tools put down the type of wood or other material you want for your platform. I chose a dark wood here.
For this tutorial I CASt the bottom of the pool a light green. To complete the look/illusion, you will also want to go down one level below ground to the "basement" and put flooring on the floor in this section in the middle of the pool. CASt this floor the same pattern as you have on the bottom of the pool. It will be darker like in the following picture because there are no lights in the "basement" section. Don't put any lights in this section though. The natural lighting will be taken care of in the next step.
Next you will want to turn on the MoveObjects cheat. For those that may not know how to do this, hold down "shift" + "ctrl" and then hit the "c" key. this will bring up a small box at the top of the screen. Enter in "moveobjects on" without the quotes, and press enter.
Then go down to the first basement level and find the window section that is three tiles wide and all glass. Then place them into the walls of your center section like in the following picture.
When done it should look like this. The windows now allow light into the center section and the floor of the pool and the floor of the center section should come very close to matching.
Next to make the platform look like it is supported by posts, I used the square column. You can use other styles of columns, or none at all, depending on the look you are going for. I placed the columns at each of the corners. With moveojbects turned on, they should snap to the corners, like this.
At this point, you should go back up to ground level and see how everything looks under the water. Sometimes, when placing objects half in the "basement" section and half in the pool bottom, the object won't show up in the game at ground level. This very thing happened to me when taking pictures for this tutorial.
To correct this, go back to the first basement level and grab the column that isn't showing up in ground level view, then hold down the "alt" key while you move the column out just a little bit from the corner. Holding down "alt" lets you place items off the "grid" for the game, and place them much more precisely than the game automatically does. In this picture I am moving the column out ever so slightly.
Then back up to ground level and it now shows below the water line like the other columns.
Next, using rocks and the heather plant in the flower section, I cover up the bottom of the window sections that show against the bottom of the pool. This helps create the illusion that the platform is above the water and only supported by the posts. You don't realize you are looking through windows instead of pool water.
You may notice again, that some items, if you put them too far into the "basement" instead of the bottom of the pool, will disappear when you go back to ground level to view the pool. If this happens, just using the "alt" key again, move them out a little bit more into the pool area. Eventually they will show from ground level view again.
If you want your sims to be able to get onto the pool platforms in-game, you want to make sure you do NOT put rocks all the way around the bottom of the center section to hide the windows. If you do (and I did this the first time) sims can't swim over the rocks to get to the platform. The game won't be able to figure out the pathing and may even go through a mini freeze (mine did) while it tries to figure out all the ways the sim might be able to get there. To solve this just make sure one area on the side of the center section is free from rocks. The heather plants here, that hide the bottom of the windows, do not interfere with the game's pathing, and sims can then climb up on the platform from the water.
I hope this helps everyone add these to their pools if they like the look of them. I know I like how they look in game. The illusion of water all the way under the platform really works in-game. And the lighting in the "basement" section matches that of the pool as the day turns to night.
If you have any questions or comments, or want clarification on something feel free to share them. Will be happy to help.
Edit:
Just want to update this a little bit. Since the release of late night getting the pools and basements to connect are a little different. So to create these platforms, you will need to just reverse the steps of placing the pools and basements. So draw your basement first, then use "ctrl" and the pool tool to draw your pools in. This will make the basement walls disappear so that you can then draw the pool next to and connecting to the basement. The rest of the tutorial should remain basically the same. I do have a tutorial specifically on connecting the basements and pools since Late Night if you want to see that more in depth.
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/291244.page
