The Sims 3 Home Building Tutorials
Pools: Multiple Level Infinity Pools
By Thomas Hickman
| Edit Town | Edit Lots | Houses | Households | Basements/Multistory | Garages | Rooms |
| Pools | Roofs | Slopes | Stairs/Elevators | Wall Curving | Moving | Switch 'hoods |
In this tutorial I will be explain how to make an Infinity Pool in The Sims 3 that has multiple levels. Now this isn't perfect, it is complicated and it is very easy to go wrong, I went wrong several times trying to recreate this pool. For this example I am only doing three levels of pool. The highest level however is not a pool because it has to be shallow to get the best effect and I used a Fountain. The method I used is complicated and currently I have not found an alternative method to doing this. If you do not have much confidence in building or not much experience with the constrainfloorelevation and placeFriezes cheats then this may be difficult for you to do.
First of all you will need to choose your Lot, you're going to need a lot of empty space and unless you have the room for it I would suggest build a House around this just to make sure you don't unintentionally mess up your house. Most importantly make sure you have a good view! For the purposes of this tutorial I have bulldozed the Wolff's Mansion in Sunset Valley and am using the empty 40x40 Lot there.
Decide where you are going to put your Pool and which way it will face. I am placing mine in the top right corner (If you were looking at it from the front of the lot). Before you start anything make sure the lot is flat, use the Flatten Lot tool if you are not sure. Now you place a wall, just a single wall, make it long enough but not too long. Place a foundation next to it, this can be any size but will need to be expanded later on.
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation false - For more information on opening the cheat console click here.
Now go to the terrain tools and use the flatten terrain tool.
Use it on the top of a Wall piece and click and drag to cover the entire foundation, you should have something like this appear:
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation true - This turns off the cheat and makes it safe to build again.
This may be a strange few steps but to me it is very useful, you now have a foundation the exact height of a Wall. Now raise the terrain under the foundation to as high as it will go and flatten it off as some parts will not have gone up as much as others.
Place stairs like these all the way down to the flat ground, you now have three levels of ground.
We need that middle level of ground mainly. Now flatten a little hill that will be the exact space of your pool. Leave an empty area of ground but fill the rest with Foundation. Remember that the bottom pool and the middle pool should work so it's best to make them bigger than the top.
Now place your pool, it's best to leave some foundations at the sides because it will hide any ugly terrain left behind, make the front open like this:
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation false - To turn it on again.
You now need to flatten the ground up to the edge of the pool. This is where you can't help have a funny looking terrain in the pool, a slight slope at the edge of the middle pool, it's a small price to pay and it didn't seem to affect my test sim.
You can see those two funny foundations; we need to get rid of those by using the terrain tool to flatten the foundation:
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation true - This turns off the cheat and makes it safe to build again.
Now for the top level of the Pool, the fake pool as I will call it. Place a room (Make sure to remove the roof if you have auto-roof on.) and set it back a square from the edge of the pool but keep it the same width.
Open the cheat console and type placeFriezes on
You can see a funny foundation that is placed on a foundation in the background, that is called a Friezes. For information on how to use and create a Friezes see this tutorial by Lilygirl.
You need to place one of those near your room.
Open the cheat console and type placeFriezes off
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation false - To turn it on again.
Now you need to level the room down to the height of the Friezes by click on one of the squares around the Friezes and dragging the green highlight over the room to get this:
Now use the Fountain tool and fill in the room with a Fountain. Like this.
When you do this the foundation goes a little funny, find a square of foundation unaffected and flatten it just to make sure.
Now also do the same to the top of the fountain as that is affected as well.
Open the cheat console and type in constrainfloorelevation true - This turns off the cheat and makes it safe to build again.
Now use the pool tool to fill in that gap between the fountain and the pool.
You might wish to add more Friezes around the fountain, you'll have to turn the cheat back on to do that but turn it off after you do that.
Now on the flat piece of ground you left earlier you can place your pool there, place it against the foundation.
You are now done with the structure. Now might be a good time to add some stairs or at least make it possible for a Sim to test both the bottom and the middle pool.
If it worked then you can decorate your pool as you wish, I did this quickly but you could do anything you want with it and even try experimenting with the Infinity Pool shapes and size (Once you're more experienced with this one first!)
Then simply dive in!
| Edit Town | Edit Lots | Houses | Households | Basements/Multistory | Garages | Rooms |
| Pools | Roofs | Slopes | Stairs/Elevators | Wall Curving | Moving | Switch 'hoods |
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I don't understand anything... :/