Most of the time, Lots in the Sims 3 are very flat and so are quite easy to build upon, however occasionally you will come across lots that aren't flat and they can be quite daunting to want to build on. Fear not! Building on lots like this is actually easier than it may first appear and can make for some more interesting buildings - and even look more natural and realistic in the surrounding landscape! With my help, even the most slanted lots will be no match for your building know-how!
The first option I'm going to show is levelling the terrain beforehand. This is useful on lots that are almost flat but not quite. To make things easier you should have some idea of what it is you're building and what it's going to look like. I'd advise levelling the terrain and getting the buildings "shell" done before any proper landscaping (just in case something goes wrong and you end up needing to start over)
First off, I tend to completely assess the patch of land I'm working with. On this lot it's higher in the top-left corner and slopes down with the lowest area next to the roads. The first decision is, do I want the building level with the road (with a slope up to the pathways on that side? Or do I want the building to have a slope up towards a building on the same sort of level as the path?
I decide I want the house to be level with the path and have the possible driveway sloping up from the road. I have to level the terrain from the top left corner and it's important to level the entire lot. This is so that the area in the middle of the lot (where it's usually best to place the building) is completely flat.
You'll notice that the edges of the lot will now look a little messy but that's not really anything to worry about at the moment. Place some floor tiles in the general area where the building and it's garden(s) will go (this is only a temporary outline so it doesn't have to be fancy) this will "lock" the terrain beneath those floor tiles so we can tidy up the lot before starting on the shell.
Next we need to smooth the lot edges and for that we need Terrain Tools>Terrain Smoothing. All you need to do is click around the edge of the lot to smooth the ground (if it's too steep Sim's can't walk on it) and it doesn't matter if you go too near the floor tiles you put down - they're there to make sure that that area is reserved for the building and therefore the terrain beneath them cannot be altered (unless you delete the floor tiles)
You should end up with something like this. It doesn't have to be perfect as you can always do it properly when you're onto landscaping the lot. You should be aware that the only guaranteed flat area on your lot will be the tiles covered by the flooring so I tend to leave it there and remove it once I've built the building shell lol
Also, having the floor tiles on the ground over the area you'll be building on also prevents the staircases from trying to bury into the ground. (Unless of course, you add in a basement beneath)
Now what to do if the lot is really wonky? Well, good news I shall be covering that in this guide too! As you can see, this lot is substantially tilted to one side and this can be used to our advantage to get a whole extra floor into the lot - this is going to become an apartment anyway so it's pretty useful but a pretty nasty lot when it comes to building - at least at first glance.
First I built a foundation from as close as I could to the road and made it cover the entire lot since there's no way we're going to be able to disguise the lot the previous way with there being enough space left for the actual building. I then deleted enough for there to be space for a walkway up to the building from the road.
Next I move the mailbox and the bin out of the way on top of the foundation. I want to put the extra floor inside the foundation. Luckily, when you place stairs like in the picture, the bottom is exactly wall depth
You'll want to level the lot from the base of the third set of stairs across and into the foundation. You'll need to leave a gap of one square around the edge as the foundation will then hide the misshapen terrain and leave the outside looking as it did from the beginning (or at least pretty much)
For the second side, I go from the area I've already flattened but staying sure to leave at least a square space around the edges
Now we need to delete the centre of the foundation so that Sims can use the useful space we've created beneath it. This bit does require some patience as you can only do it in steps. You need to sledgehammer sections of the foundation no more than 2 squares wide and then cover with floor tile before deleting the next strip of foundation. Deleting the foundation in one go and then trying to place the floor will not work
You should end up with something like this! It doesn't matter what flooring you use as this is all just as a base (you can go over it properly later) I want this level to have it's own entrance from the outdoors, so let's see how we do that...
First I need to position the camera to see what I'm doing and then I delete the section of foundation where I want the entrance to be and cover above it as much as I can with floor tiles. The middle two aren't able to be covered at the moment but it isn't something to worry about
Draw a wall between the foundations - you won't need cheats since the foundation is already the height of the wall. Now we're able to cover the two middle tiles!
Now we have something that looks like this! Now we need to delete those stairs and smoothen the terrain on the outside.
...Smoothing the terrain...
Now we have something like this! Because I'm pedantic, I like to cover the gaps on the foundation so that it looks disguised.
This should be the view of the floor below - make sure that it's all level inside and you can even put walls in at this point if you want to (but I tend to leave that til the shell is completely done) You can see that the wonky terrain is hidden between the foundation walls which is very handy!
Now we need to make sure we can place stairs up to the lot so flatten the floor from where you started building the foundation but this time from street level. In my case this was the bottom right by the street light and road. Cover it with floor tile from the foundation out towards the street - you'll notice it'll bend but that doesn't matter at this point as we can disguise it later.
You'll need to soften the terrain but be careful not to go too near the foundation if you haven't placed a cover of floortiles on the "basement" floor.
You'll have a result like this but you'll notice there's a little kink near the floor tiles we placed.
To get around it, delete a square width from the floor tile path and soften the terrain. Next we need to make sure that Sims can access the basement level from outside..
Flatten the lot from the inside of your basement to one square outside the wall. this is because doors need the ground either side of the wall to be completely flat.
To add a bit of depth to the base and not make it look so boxy, I moved the wall back and made sure to cover the flattened area with floor tile to keep it flat.
Time to do some final softening and tweaking to make the slope a little more natural looking
And there we have it! A base to build upon that fits into the terrain around it almost seamlessly.
Written by Georgina
Written by Georgina