Today’s Sims 4 building tutorial might give you some ideas to help your landscapes appear a little more realistic, and a little less flat. I’m still holding out hope that terraforming tools will be added in a future patch or DLC, but in the meantime we can get creative!
In this tutorial, we’re going to use a combination of building techniques, which can add some needed character to an otherwise level surface.
Let’s begin!
In build mode, press CTRL + SHIFT + C to bring up the type field in the top left of your screen. We’re going to type in a couple of cheats:
bb.moveobjects
bb.showhiddenobjects
Adding Caverns
First, let’s start with depressed areas. I’m going to use the basement tool to cut out a hole. Use the custom basement tool to trace a shape that is sharp and irregular.
Once you have your jagged basement, select it by clicking on the side, then use the up-level arrow in the top right of your screen to move up to the ground level. Hover over the outline and you’ll see a yellow band appear on the basement outline. Click the yellow band, and click ‘remove ceiling.’ Now you have a nice looking hole!
Change the wall covering to resemble rock or stone, add some grass, rock, or dirt flooring. Now we can get ready to add some pizzaz!
Using rocks, or rock-like objects, you can start to layer them on top of and inside of each other. Scale them to larger sizes using the right square bracket key ( ] ) or bring the size back to normal with the left square bracket key ( [ ) while you have the object selected.
To move an object up, select the object and press the number (0). To move it down, or back to the baseline, hit the (9) number key. Don’t forget to hold down ALT while placing your objects to avoid the grid snap, too!
Keep placing and overlapping rock shapes of different sizes, shapes, and elevations all around the hole opening. You want to soften the jagged corners and the final result will be more pleasing to the eye.
Adding Hills
To add a hill, a similar technique of layering can be used.
Type ‘garden‘ in the item search field. When you do this, avoid hitting enter. Hitting enter can sometimes result in a search of the most relevant items. We want to see something hidden. When you type in garden, click the search magnifying glass icon next to it for best results.
Since we entered the showhiddenobjects cheat at the beginning, we’ll be able to see some hidden and debug items to place.
You’re going to want to place this garden dirt pile debug item. You can overlap and resize these to your liking!
Add some rocks, grass, flowers – whatever you like! Layer all of the things! You’ll want to add some ground paint (or so I call it) underneath and around the edges to blend the dirt pile into the flat ground a little better.
Using these techniques can add some life to your builds. Sure, these specific design elements won’t work for every type of landscaping project, but they’re nice to pull out every once and a while.
Though your Sims won’t be able to hike up one of these hills or jump down a cavern, they’ll look good in the environment all the same!
The featured pictures are from a recent build where I used these faux terrain tool tricks. You can find the build on the gallery under my Origin ID (HollieBBTV).
Shoutout to TheNUBalicious for the dirt pile idea!
Be on the look out for another Sims 4 building tutorial next Friday!
You can catch my Let’s Plays and Build Casts daily on twitch.tv/holliebb
Unlike previous generations, Vampires in the Sims 4 can level up their supernatural status all the way up to being a Grand Master Vampire. This seems to have impressed those of you who enjoy your story-driven gameplay, but for those of you who love the Sims 4 Challenges it’s a chance for you to really get stuck in to some immersive gaming that forces you to invest some time in developing your Sims that little bit more.
Power Points are awarded to you when your Vampire Sim levels up and gets a new rank. When you create a Vampire Sim in CAS, they start as Fledgling Vampire Level 1 in rank and they will automatically have 2 Power Points to spend on some new Vampire Abilities (don’t worry, we’ll talk more about that below!). At certain ranks, you will also have to take a Vampire Weakness when you take on a new ability – so make sure you choose carefully! Power Points available to your Sim is displayed at the bottom of their needs, next to a small book symbol which will take you to a catalog of abilities they are able to purchase. Below is a list of Vampire ranks, and what you gain when you achieve them.
You can find the mod 
