Summer is still strong and your sims still have a few weeks left to enjoy the sun. However, the people of your own virtual world no longer care for a simple square…
They want to live the high life, with style and glamour! Therefore, we will be publishing a three-part article to help you out. Regardless if you are an inexperienced or avid builder, take a look at these step-by-step designs and give your sims more than simple water in a boring stationary container! Here’s the first:
The Pond-Pool
A Gallery favourite, this ever popular design is easy to achieve and with stunning results.
You are going to use the Custom Pool Tool.
Start drawing a line by left-clicking the mouse as you go. The more irregular, the better.
Make sure the last postmark meets the first, completing the drawing.
There you go!
Our Little Secret
For the next step we are going to need a cheat. Don’t worry! Nobody needs to know! Move Objects will allow us to place objects anywhere, without any sort of restriction. To activate it, you you press Ctrl, Shift and C all at once. That will open a cheat box on the top left corner. Type in bb.moveobjects on. Finally, hit Enter.
As you can see above, there is a confirmation that you’ve entered the cheat correctly.
Rocky V
Now we are going to place rocks around the pool’s border. If you don’t know where to find them, simply search for Rocks and press Enter.
Let’s do this!
Try to intercalate different rocks and rotate them, so they look more natural and not like this:
This, below, is what you want.
When placing rocks, smaller ones that are part of the sets might look like they are floating, a fairly unusual behaviour for rocks!
Please, rotate them, so the laws of Physics can be maintained!
Keeping It Fully Functional
In order for sims to be able to swim in it, you’ll need to leave a few access points, not covered by rocks, similar to these indicated by red the circles.
Interior Design
A stone finish will help. First, let’s change the floor tiles.
Matching walls are next!
This is a good time to decide how deep our pond-pool will be. Click on the pool and you’ll see three available depths.
I think we are going for shallow here.
Waterscaping
Normally, we cannot use fountain decorations in pools. But, because we have Move Objects activated, we are able to and will. Let’s add a some water plants to feign a more natural look.
Remember to rotate the plants a bit and use irregular placement patterns, much like we did with the rocks. Also, make sure you leave space for swimming.
And since we have started landscaping, let’s add some plants around our pond-pool.
Because of , again, Move Objects, we can place plants close together and it looks much more seamless and real.
Final Touch
The last step will be applying terrain paints around the pond-pool. First, something sandy.
After using it around the entire pool, let’s get a second paint, darker. Move the strength slider to the softer side. We just want to add some nuance and detail closer to the border and to the plants’ roots.
Are We Done?
The pool is ready and you can set it as a Generic lot. However, only your own sims will visit a Generic lot. A simple solution is to add a grill, a picnic table and a trash can. Now you can set it as a National Park! You can set any lot as a National Park, even if you do not own Outdoor Retreat.
Share Your Pools!
Whether your pool is standalone, like the above, or part of a home or community lot, we want to see it!
Upload pictures to Sims Community Social Media section.
Create threads about your creations at the My Gallery section.
Share at the Gallery using the hashtash #simscomunnity.
I am Kai Chen at Sims Community Social and kaichen04 at the Gallery. You can download the lot from this tutorial HERE.