Just can't get good at building?

"Takissis;c-17480124" wrote:
LionessMN is absolutely right. There are tons of tutorials on building out there. For an absolute beginner, I recommend the Out of the Box Building by AdelaideBliss. It's short and very basic, but it's a good starting point.

Rosemow started a thread that is posted above full of tutorials also. You can find it Here.

When designing a new house, I start with looking at real life blueprints. You have to use them with a grain of salt because the proportions can tend to be a bit off. The general rule of thumb is 3 feet=1 square. I tend to round up, but be prepared to make smaller or larger to fit what you want to do. Also, for your roofing and exterior colors, look at pictures of real houses. Look at contrasting colors, accents, etc. Ask yourself questions like what do you like about this house and why. See if you can duplicate designs you like in Sims 4. Also, look at builders on the gallery and see what draws your eyes. What do you like and how did they do it? Never directly copy, but see if you can replicate styles, or pick things apart to figure out how it was done.

Learn the keys and cheats that will help you. They are listed all over the place, but for example, the Alt key is your friend. Used properly, you can move and place things where you want. Learn how to move items up and down, rotate freely, place freely, enlarge things or make them smaller.

With roofing, you can hit Shift while you adjust the eaves to change just that side. Also, roofs can stack if you have turned on move objects, so you can use them to cover areas more easily from different angles. And I think it's CTRL + SHIFT + C that will add the extra little markers on the roofs to change the shape. Hold down ALT when raising or lowering a roof pitch. This allows a smoother move and less snap to grid type of change of height (hard to explain that).

Test different swatches for different designs and colors. When looking at other's work, I'm always surprised to find things I didn't know existed because I never looked through the swatches completely. This goes for walls and floors too. Recently, I've used the sort tool (on the bottom left of your screen, to sort by colors. It's not the best feature, for example, if I know I want a blue wall, I can sort by blue and it will bring up all of the options that have blue in them. I have found a lot of stuff that I had missed before.

The absolute best advice I can give is to just keep trying. Build and build and build more. Every build I do, I learn something new. Also, sign up for an image hosting site, such as imjur and take screen shots. Post them here. People here love to see other's work and you can ask for feedback if you like. Join shell challenges. Most are for just fun and to showcase what you have done, but you can get some good feedback there.

Understand it's like any art. You will have to keep plugging at it to get truly good. Have fun with it though. Make designs that you enjoy. Give different techniques a try to find new ideas.

Most of all though, have fun and keep trying.

"Takissis;c-17480124" wrote:
LionessMN is absolutely right. There are tons of tutorials on building out there. For an absolute beginner, I recommend the Out of the Box Building by AdelaideBliss. It's short and very basic, but it's a good starting point.

Rosemow started a thread that is posted above full of tutorials also. You can find it Here.

When designing a new house, I start with looking at real life blueprints. You have to use them with a grain of salt because the proportions can tend to be a bit off. The general rule of thumb is 3 feet=1 square. I tend to round up, but be prepared to make smaller or larger to fit what you want to do. Also, for your roofing and exterior colors, look at pictures of real houses. Look at contrasting colors, accents, etc. Ask yourself questions like what do you like about this house and why. See if you can duplicate designs you like in Sims 4. Also, look at builders on the gallery and see what draws your eyes. What do you like and how did they do it? Never directly copy, but see if you can replicate styles, or pick things apart to figure out how it was done.

Learn the keys and cheats that will help you. They are listed all over the place, but for example, the Alt key is your friend. Used properly, you can move and place things where you want. Learn how to move items up and down, rotate freely, place freely, enlarge things or make them smaller.

With roofing, you can hit Shift while you adjust the eaves to change just that side. Also, roofs can stack if you have turned on move objects, so you can use them to cover areas more easily from different angles. And I think it's CTRL + SHIFT + C that will add the extra little markers on the roofs to change the shape. Hold down ALT when raising or lowering a roof pitch. This allows a smoother move and less snap to grid type of change of height (hard to explain that).

Test different swatches for different designs and colors. When looking at other's work, I'm always surprised to find things I didn't know existed because I never looked through the swatches completely. This goes for walls and floors too. Recently, I've used the sort tool (on the bottom left of your screen, to sort by colors. It's not the best feature, for example, if I know I want a blue wall, I can sort by blue and it will bring up all of the options that have blue in them. I have found a lot of stuff that I had missed before.

The absolute best advice I can give is to just keep trying. Build and build and build more. Every build I do, I learn something new. Also, sign up for an image hosting site, such as imjur and take screen shots. Post them here. People here love to see other's work and you can ask for feedback if you like. Join shell challenges. Most are for just fun and to showcase what you have done, but you can get some good feedback there.

Understand it's like any art. You will have to keep plugging at it to get truly good. Have fun with it though. Make designs that you enjoy. Give different techniques a try to find new ideas.

Most of all though, have fun and keep trying.

I just thought I would reply again and say I have managed a couple of builds since you posted this, if anyone did want to check them out my name on the gallery is 2000_mollymoo :blush: the only one out of the three that I really like is my wedding chapel, but I'm pretty proud of it :smile:

Hey @moo ,

I am also a long time simmer, but recent full member. I totally know how you feel! I feel like when I try to make my own designs everything just looks boxy and I was so confused when I couldnt find the autoroof button lol.

So lately I've been finding inspiration through pictures and youtube speedbuilds. It just helps so much - cause honestly, I don't know what the heck kind of specific features a Victorian house would have off the top of my head. So yeah, youtube/photos, I start from there as a base and then I can kind of make it my own from there.

Also if there are things that are unclear on how to do -GOOGLE. I just google everything lol. I recently googled some roofing tutorials that were super helpful!!

Anyway - good luck with your building goals!

"gogojelly;c-17493992" wrote:
Hey @moo ,

I am also a long time simmer, but recent full member. I totally know how you feel! I feel like when I try to make my own designs everything just looks boxy and I was so confused when I couldnt find the autoroof button lol.

So lately I've been finding inspiration through pictures and youtube speedbuilds. It just helps so much - cause honestly, I don't know what the heck kind of specific features a Victorian house would have off the top of my head. So yeah, youtube/photos, I start from there as a base and then I can kind of make it my own from there.

Also if there are things that are unclear on how to do -GOOGLE. I just google everything lol. I recently googled some roofing tutorials that were super helpful!!

Anyway - good luck with your building goals!

Aww thanks for this! Really nice to know I'm not the only one! Glad you've been having success with building recently!

I have been building since sims came out and I still learn things, I use google images often to start me off with just the front of a home then go from there. I also admire others work, sometimes download a build to look at how they achieved something I like the look of. Feel free to look at mine I have done a lot of community lots and homes in many styles, I like to try different things so im not repeating myself or get bored myself Lol. My Thread is here https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/936731/luckyheathers-creations/p1?new=1 There is a lot but do have a peek if you want I do add screenshots of everything I upload. Have Fun learning as it Never ends!
Stay safe and well :)

I would suggest you start recreating houses from google cause that way you really start to learn using all of the sims 4 build features and you also start to see what looks good and what doesn't. This is what I did in the beginning and I have improved a lot since my first builds. I would also suggest that if you don't have quite the experience yet, you stay away from diagonal walls for a bit since the roofing on them is indeed a handful. You can always find me on the gallery under simooon2002 where I have recently picked up uploading builds again so feel free to ask me any questions there if you have any!:)

"luckyheather;c-17495057" wrote:

I have been building since sims came out and I still learn things, I use google images often to start me off with just the front of a home then go from there. I also admire others work, sometimes download a build to look at how they achieved something I like the look of. Feel free to look at mine I have done a lot of community lots and homes in many styles, I like to try different things so im not repeating myself or get bored myself Lol. My Thread is here https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/936731/luckyheathers-creations/p1?new=1 There is a lot but do have a peek if you want I do add screenshots of everything I upload. Have Fun learning as it Never ends!
Stay safe and well :)

Thank you for the tips! I had a look at your builds and I really like them, you're right there is so much variety you've done a bit of everything! I'm currently attempting my fourth community lot, which is my biggest one yet- a spa. It's been quite hard and I have had to work on it over a few days a few hours at a time! But it's in a style to match Oasis Springs :) thank you again and you stay safe too!! :)

"simgame;c-17495108" wrote:
I would suggest you start recreating houses from google cause that way you really start to learn using all of the sims 4 build features and you also start to see what looks good and what doesn't. This is what I did in the beginning and I have improved a lot since my first builds. I would also suggest that if you don't have quite the experience yet, you stay away from diagonal walls for a bit since the roofing on them is indeed a handful. You can always find me on the gallery under simooon2002 where I have recently picked up uploading builds again so feel free to ask me any questions there if you have any!:)

Ah thank you for the advice, especially regarding the diagonal walls! I will try to avoid them for the time being! Your builds are insane! I'd love to be able to build like that :open_mouth: I'll be sure to ask if I ever need any more advice :)

There is a lot of good advice here and I am not a builder at all, but I can confirm that with practice there is so much room to improve. Pictures of houses and floorplans are a great place to start, as already mentioned. But also try to let your ideas and sparks of creativity take you places. For example, I once decided to make a house based on the floorplan of an apartment we once lived in. I loved the results so much in turned out ot be one of my favourite builds. Or just the other day I wanted to make a tradional looking greenhouse with the windows that came with CL. So I just went into the game, chose a rather big lot in Oasis Springs and made the greenhouse. Then I added some perfect plants, which I had saved to my gallery. And then I thought, ok, what am I going to do with this? So I started building a park around it and I really liked how it turned out with the barbecue area, playground equipement and landscaping. When I was all done I switched to one of the families in that save and the stay-at-home dad took his toddler to the park. And when I saw all the other Sims populating that park, playing on the swings, sitting down to play chess and the kids on the monkey bars ... it just made me happy. My park is not perfect and there are much better builders out there, but I made it and it works. It gave me a much better feeling than if I had downloaded a lot. Sorry for the long unhelpful post, but I am just trying to say, keep at it, it's a very rewarding experience once you figured out how to make builds you enjoy in your game. :)

"Netzspannung;c-17498793" wrote:
There is a lot of good advice here and I am not a builder at all, but I can confirm that with practice there is so much room to improve. Pictures of houses and floorplans are a great place to start, as already mentioned. But also try to let your ideas and sparks of creativity take you places. For example, I once decided to make a house based on the floorplan of an apartment we once lived in. I loved the results so much in turned out ot be one of my favourite builds. Or just the other day I wanted to make a tradional looking greenhouse with the windows that came with CL. So I just went into the game, chose a rather big lot in Oasis Springs and made the greenhouse. Then I added some perfect plants, which I had saved to my gallery. And then I thought, ok, what am I going to do with this? So I started building a park around it and I really liked how it turned out with the barbecue area, playground equipement and landscaping. When I was all done I switched to one of the families in that save and the stay-at-home dad took his toddler to the park. And when I saw all the other Sims populating that park, playing on the swings, sitting down to play chess and the kids on the monkey bars ... it just made me happy. My park is not perfect and there are much better builders out there, but I made it and it works. It gave me a much better feeling than if I had downloaded a lot. Sorry for the long unhelpful post, but I am just trying to say, keep at it, it's a very rewarding experience once you figured out how to make builds you enjoy in your game. :)

Thank you so much for this!! I love the idea of that park you made, it's so cute that it just kept growing as you added ideas to it and ended up being a really happy place in your game! I think I do get what you mean about the feeling you get when it's your own build. The builds that ship with the game can sometimes be a bit empty, especially once you have added packs, or they are mainly the same and missing new types of lots. I love gallery builds, but often I just feel like I can't connect with homes or community lots I haven't built myself, because I can't figure out floorplans of houses I haven't built, or a community lot off the gallery will look stunning but not include a particular idea I had. I can't fully put it into words really, but I think I kinda get what you mean! :)

One trick I use to help to learn, if I see something interesting on the gallery and not sure how they did it, I download it into my game and go into build mode and deconstruct it a little bit. Some of the time you think it was just one roof piece (for example) and actually find out it was 3 once you start to move things around. It kind of opened my eyes a bit to how much you can actually do with the tools. I often find inspiration in it to make my own similar interesting shape and trying to mix and match the different bits to make it work.

To be clear, I'm not saying to copy people's lots. I'm saying they can be useful as tools to learn how to roof different shapes and as inspiration for your own. ;)