XQ Showcase. Latest: The Art of Charm

The exterior design of Oasis Shades is very nice! :) Very nice layout of the build! It looks very nice how you have placed the windows in the build! The stone texture of parts of the exterior looks nice. It looks nice the way you have water on the edges of the building. Very nice roof covered pool area! The trees look nice how you have placed them and suit the world. Very nice outdoors living patio for sims to enjoy sitting outdoors on the seating there, having a drink and listening to music from the stereo or from sims playing the piano.
The home is very nice :)

Thanks, @rosemow !

I have another build that doesn't fit into any of my usual discussion threads, so I am claiming this one for a showcase thread.

The new build? I finally dug out the wallet, blew off the dust, and picked up both the Spa Day pack and the Perfect Patio pack last weekend. And the first thing that came to mind (once I was done checking out all the new stuff) was that I wanted to build my own spa, something different from the ones available ... something that wasn't vaguely modern-Asian-fusion-ish. It occurred to me that the spa is closely related to the old Roman bath, and so....

Gallery link: Spa Romana

Street view, from the left:
http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/spa01.jpg

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Playtested, and I would say that about 75% of the playtesting was just about the yoga mats alone. Each yoga mat has a placement footprint of 3x2, and it turns out that once they're in use, the 3x2 footprint suddenly becomes verboten and you can't walk across them. Which meant that, since my yoga area was only 6 squares wide, a neatly organised 2-per-row grid of yoga mats wouldn't allow people to pass to the mats in the back if the mats in front were both in use. It took a bit of rearranging and retesting before I found a layout that worked and didn't look like a mess.

It is great that you have bought Spa Day and Perfect Patio packs! :) You will enjoy using the items that came with them in your builds.
Spa Romana is such a very nice spa venue! :) The design and layout of the build is so very nice! It looks very nice how you have placed the columns in the build! The roofing is very nice! It looks very nice how you have set up the outdoors yoga and mediation areas on the colonnades. The colonnades sections look very great! Very nice hot tub nook! Sims will enjoy relaxing in the tub. It looks nice how you have placed the hedging on the edges of the nook. Very nice pool area! Sims will enjoy swimming there. Sims will enjoy having a relaxing foot and hand massage whilst sitting in the massage chairs.
It is a very nice spa venue for sims to enjoy visiting! :)

Thanks, @rosemow ! I only hope everybody else likes it that much.

Spa Romana is sooo stunning!!!! :star:

Thanks, @yanti68 ! I usually feel like I'm just blindly flailing about (or else resorting to a very narrow tried-and-true template) when it comes to furnishing and decor, so it's very encouraging that you like it.

New build! Well, sort of. This one is more of an academic exercise ... it's a courtyard house based on a sketch of a floorplan from ancient Babylon, circa 600BC. It's not exactly a new build because it's actually a revision of one of the first builds I ever made, back before the introduction of half-walls made the roof parapets possible. (The first version, which I've since removed from the gallery, had one of the masonry fences instead. It ... didn't look half as good.) I've also tweaked a bunch of other things.

Gallery link: Babylon 600BC

Here's the sketch; I've mostly been looking at "House A":

http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/merkes.jpg

The front facade is nothing to write home about; the main point of these houses was that the rooms looked inwards to the main courtyard, and presented a mostly-blank wall to the street. Here's the plan I adapted from the sketch:

http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/600BC02.jpg

As you can see, I simplified and reduced a bunch of things. The biggest change I've made is in the back: I've added a dining room and a walled garden, and I've replaced the two-room suite with a second bathroom and a passage to the garden. I don't think I've diverged from the principles of the typical Babylonian courtyard house in doing this.

And then, of course, there's the roof:

http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/600BC03.jpg

I admit I took a few liberties here. I don't actually know if that thing with the pergola was usual, or if it was even ever done; but it adds a bit of variety to the rooftop, I think, and I like it.

Finally, a view from within the garden. I was actually surprised at how charming this turned out.

http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/600BC04.jpg

Thanks, @rosemow ! I'm glad you like it.

Two houses to showcase this time around.

For the 4sims4 seventh building challenge (the thread is here, though of course it's moved on to other challenges since then) I was challenged to build a house in a "traditional" style. "Traditional" in North America usually means "Cape Cod, Craftsman or Carpenter's Gothic", as far as I can tell, and I thought, why not take a look at some European traditions? I'd been thinking of doing a Hungarian farmhouse for a while, so that's what I decided to do.

And the build tied for first in the "Open" category! So I'm pleased. I'm actually using the build in my game now, too, and I don't usually do that.

Gallery link: Hungarian Farmhouse

I must confess that at the time I made this pictures, I didn't actually know how to use the tab camera in live mode. So they're not, perhaps, as wonderful as they could be....
http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/4sims4/4S4-07-1.jpg

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AND! I also made a much cheaper, starter version of the house: Hungarian Starter

The live mode tab camera adds the potential for a little more drama in your pictures, I find....
http://www.ricordius.com/sims4/starter/hungary.jpg