Tutorials:Creating Sims 3 Worlds
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Introduction
Create a World (CAW) is an EA created tool which allows players to create their own worlds (neighborhoods) for The Sims 3. With almost limitless possibilities, you can sculpt the world to your exact design. But it can be complicated to use, and there's a lot of things to consider when making a world. This tutorial will take you from start to finish so you can make your very own worlds for your game and for others to use.
A Word of Warning
Creating a world is time-consuming. It can take a loooooooooong time to create a good world - it would be very surprising to see a full world including decorated lots created in under a month of dedicated, regular hard work, and for most people it would probably take longer. Each individual part really isn't that difficult and some of it is quite relaxing and enjoyable, but it is tedious. And you really can't halfass it. If you want to create just a blank map, that can take less time, but you really still have to do a lot of the tedious parts even then too.
Making your very own world from scratch is a rewarding and overall fun experience, but if you're doing more than just playing around - if you truly want to make your own full neighborhood to the quality of Riverview or Sunset Valley, then you are committing a serious chunk of time to this to do it right.
Skill Level
Average computer user-ish. Most of the Create a World interface is pretty easy to use, once you know where everything is. You'll need to know basic stuff - finding particular folders, moving files around, not using your mouse as a foot pedal. For custom textures and such, it can get a bit more advanced, but none of this is rocket surgery. It's just kind of complicated but not -hard-.
You Will Need
- Create a World - A free download. Download it, run the exe. This is PC only - Mac folks will have to use Bootcamp or something like that.
- A fully updated game: Run the game's Launcher and Update your game. You may have to update EA Download Manager to do this. You may also have to update expansions separately from the base game. Update everything.
- Remove your mods: Sometimes, mods can interfere with CAW working properly. Temporarily remove the contents of your Program Files\Electronic Arts\Mods\Packages folder to somewhere else. Files installed as sims3packs are probably okay.
- Photoshop or a graphics editor (optional): If you want to truly customize stuff, this can be helpful but isn't strictly necessary to make a new world. You'll need a DDS plugin (google Photoshop DDS plugin or Paint Shop DDS plugin or whatever you're using) to save some images.
Make a Plan
If you're going to do a complete neighborhood, before you ever open CAW, you should draw out a basic outline (at least in your head) of what kind of neighborhood you want to create. Having a solid plan before you start will help give you a goal and direction as you work - really necessary for a long haul project.
- Size: Riverview and Sunset Valley are the largest available size, though they use up a lot of space around the edges in inaccessible hills. Do you want a small, cozy neighborhood that's just big enough to fit everything, or a bustling urban landscape with houses and businesses everywhere - or maybe a small town surrounded by wilderness? Once you get past terrain sculpting, you won't be able to easily resize your world without losing work, so be sure of the size!
- Terrain: What sort of land forms do you want to create? An island? A rolling plain? A valley between steep mountain ranges? Think about the kind of views you want to create - what's your idea of a beautiful vista? Sketch out a basic shape for where you want the water, the hills, the flat parts. You can always change it later. Also, consider what kind of climate you want for your world - tropical, grassland, beach, alien lava rocks, whatever. What would the weather be like there? What kind of plants grow there? You may vary the landscaping here and there on particular lots and areas, but overall, have an idea of whether you want palm trees or oaks.
- Style and Theme: What kind of overall style do you want for your world? What sort of sims will be living there? What do their homes look like? Try looking at house plans and browsing by style to get an idea of what appeals to you (and you think you could build). While individual houses or groups of houses in a world will vary, most real life places have a general style in one area, and most of the buildings will have elements of that style. Decide what elements you want throughout your creation.
- Special Features: What interesting stuff do you want to include in your world? What neat little nooks and crannies or pretty spots do you imagine would be nice? Roughly where would you put them on the map? Jot down any cool ideas you have for your world as you're doing the sculpting, so you can make sure to leave room for everything you want.
Basic World
A basic map is one created up to a level where you could reasonably share it with others - it's a blank slate with everything but stuff on the lots and sims placed. Everything that can be done in Create a World has been done, and all that's left is doing the stuff that can all be done in-game. "Basic" may sound easy, but there are a lot of parts to creating a basic map.
Create a New World
Run Create a World.
File > New World.
New World Options: Here, you'll need to select the height map you want to use for your new world. A height map is an image which uses light and dark shading to represent higher and lower areas - a topographical map. CAW comes with many built-in height maps which you can use as a starting point. Choose one that sounds interesting - or try taking a look at a few to see if any inspire you.
- Premade height maps are located in: My Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 Create A World Tool\UserToolData\HeightMaps
- You can choose between Large, Medium, Small, and Tiny maps. Medium or Large is recommended so you have enough space to fit everything, though you could be very clever and do something cool with a smaller map.
- You can choose between Lush and Desert for your default texture - but you can always change the textures later.
- The number on the end of the height map file name indicates the correct setting to use under Maximum Height (100, 200, or 300). So MediumMountainRiverMap200.png should be used with a Maximum Height set to 200.
- There will be some delay after clicking OK on New World Options - CAW may appear to be frozen. Give it a little bit - it has to generate a whole map from an image.
- Performance Tip: Maximum Height is the maximum height of terrain on the map - you can't have mountains as high using 100 as you can 200 or 300. A lower Maximum Height means better performance, so use the lowest one you can for the world you want to create.
Custom Height Maps (Optional)
Even if you don't draw out your whole height map in detail, you may find it helpful to at least use a large blobby brush to draw out where you want the hills, where you want mountains, and where you want low areas.
- Size of the height map image = size of the map: The larger the image, the larger the map:
- Large: 2048x2048
- Medium: 1024x1024
- Small: 512x512
- Tiny: 256x256
- Height maps are 16-bit greyscale PNG images. Saving in any other setting will cause your height map to be smushed down and repeated twice across the world map. To change this in Photoshop, use the Image > Mode menu to set it to Greyscale and 16 Bits/Channel.
CAW Setup
CAW is not very customizable, but there's a few settings you'll want to know about before you get too far:
- View > Fog - Turn off to remove the haze you'll see when viewing terrain and objects at a distance. You'll usually want this off - it's on by default.
- View > Camera Settings - The view distance slider is here. You probably don't want to max it out unless you have an amazing computer, but you may want to turn it up one or two notches, so more of the terrain will be fully rendered and clear.
CAW Controls
Moving around in CAW can be kind of tricky. Here are the basic controls:
| Keyboard and Mouse Controls | |
|---|---|
| Select and manipulate stuff | Left mouse button |
| Zoom in/out | Middle mouse scroll W/S NumPad +/- |
| Look around | Middle mouse click |
| Pan camera view | Mouse right-click and drag Arrow Keys |
| Camera up/down | Q/F |
| Exit current tool | Esc |
| Delete selected object | Del |
Practice moving around in CAW for a while before trying to edit - get used to the way the camera moves.
- Tip: You can move the camera faster if you use two controls that move you in the same direction. For example, use the mouse wheel to scroll up (to zoom in) while using the up arrow key to go forward and you'll move forward faster than if you did either one alone.
Saving Your World
Once you have found a map that you like well enough to start working on, save it. Save often! Some things in CAW, you cannot undo, and it can crash or otherwise have issues.
File > Save As. A standard save box will come up - give your world a name and save it.
- Tip: You may want to keep incremental saves - do Save As instead of Save periodically as you're working on your world, and give it a new name. For example, MyIsland1, MyIsland2, etc. That way, you can go back to an older version if you have made changes you're not too happy with, or if anything goes wrong with your current version.
- Tip: The game saves backup copies of old versions - occasionally it will ask you if you want to delete some older backups when you go to save. Press Cancel to save anyway but without deleting the backups. You can do this instead of incremental saves, but for something that you work on so much, why not do both - better to be safe than sorry! For very large, complex worlds the files may get quite large, so you might remove some very old ones yourself and keep only the newest few.
Terrain Sculpting
The first major part of creating a world is terrain sculpting. It can be extremely time consuming and tedious but also very relaxing once you get into it.
Sculpting Basics
Here, you find the controls that will allow you to make mountains, carve canyons, and place plains.
Modifiers are the different types of effects that you can use to shape your world. They're listed at the top of the Sculpt panel.
| Modifier | Effect |
|---|---|
| Flatten - Gentle | Levels terrain at a low rate. Not reliable enough to use in flattening for lot placement, but can be used for interesting effects with smaller brushes at a fairly high setting. |
| Flatten Terrain | Levels terrain at a high rate. Use at a strength of 100 to flatten for lot placement, or at a lower level to create plateaus for later smoothing. |
| Hill - Gentle | Raises terrain at a low rate. Click and drag around a little to continue raising. A big brush gives mountains, a middle one hills, and a small one small rocks. |
| Hill - Steep | Raises terrain at a high rate. Less useful than Hill Gentle as it's harder to control. |
| Mountain | Raises terrain at a very high rate. Not very useful at all. |
| Sheer Cliff | Raises terrain sharply at a high rate. Easier to just use Hill Gentle and adjust the Falloff. |
| Smooth | Blend terrain heights at a high rate to even out terrain. |
| Smooth - Gentle | Blends terrain heights at a low rate to even out terrain. |
| Valley - Gentle | Lowers terrain at a low rate. |
| Valley - Steep | Lowers terrain at a high rate. Less useful than Valley Gentle as it's harder to control. |
Below the Modifiers is the Show Unroutable Terrain tickbox. This is a very important tickbox! When ticked, it will show red on terrain that is too steep for sims. As you get toward the final version of your terrain and you're putting on the finishing touches, you'll want to use this tickbox a lot. You don't want a few patches of unroutable terrain on an otherwise smooth hill, and you may want to increase the incline on certain areas. There's a lot more to routing - see below under the Routing section.
At the bottom of the panel is Brushes and Brush Parameters. You can change brush settings here to have exact control over how you shape the terrain.
- Size: How big an area you want to effect. Start with a larger brush to rough in the main features and then use a smaller brush for fine detail.
- Strength: How strong you want the brush to be. For most uses, you'll probably want this at a low setting like 5-20 as this gives you greater control. You can always click and drag or click multiple times for a greater effect.
- Falloff: How fuzzy the edges of the brush are. Set to 0 for a very soft edge that's good for blending and 100 to a hard edge.
You can use the small blue button at the top of Brush Parameters to save a brush as a preset under Brushes. Right-click on a brush in the list to delete it.
Tips
Creating realistic terrain is as much an art as it is a skill, but here's some tips on improving your terrain:
- Remember the Sun: View > Time of Day will allow you to see how your landmasses will look at various positions of the sun. Setting this to 6:00 shows you sunrise and 18:00 shows you sunset. You may wish to sculpt your landscape to make the most of sunrise and sunset.
- Edge of the World: The world map you have to work with is of a limited size, and you have to figure out what to do with the edges of the world - there's nothing but an endless stretch of water out there. The easiest thing would be just to make an island. You can also create a mountain range or rolling hills around your world and make the edges off-limits to the camera by the using of Routing (see below section) - Riverview uses this method by having lots of farmland that rises up around the edges of the map. Or, you can use one of the premade distance terrain objects. Sunset Valley uses this method, with the distance terrain being all of the faraway surrounding mountains, hills, and roads leading off into the distance. There are ones for China, France, etc. supplied as well if you have World Adventures. You have to position these objects correctly and sculpt and paint the edges of your terrain to match the edges of the objects, but the end result can be worth the effort for the effect created in-game. Whatever you do, you want your world to seem realistic to the player, without the watery edges of the world showing unless you intend them to be visible.
- Big to Small: Start with a general overview of your map - do all of the big parts first - rough out mountain ranges, high plains, beaches, islands, etc. with a large brush. Think about the sorts of views you're going to make. Then go over again and refine your map; not a final draft, but give your mountains some shape, and work on some of the transitions from high to low. Leave the details till later, after you've placed the lots and roads. You'll be kicking yourself if you spend three hours sculpting the perfect mountain and then realize you actually need to put something there once you start placing your lots.
- Special Features: Leave some sort of indication of where you want the special features you planned out before. Even if it's a dip in the landscape, or a little raised circle, it will help reserve that area as you work.
Top Left (Step 1): Raise with Hill Gentle.
Top Right: (Step 2) Sculpt branching ridges with Hill Gentle set to a smaller brush.
Bottom Left (Step 3): Carve details with Valley Gentle set to a very small brush.
Bottom Right (Step 4): Basic terrain painting.
- Mountains: Use Hill Gentle set to a large size to create a big raised area for a mountain. Then set it a bit smaller and begin making some ridges down the side. Branch off the ridges a little here and there. Use Valley Gentle set to a very small size to begin carving the mountainside and making it look rough and craggy - imagine your brush is water going down the mountainside, finding the easiest path, and eroding the rock as it goes. You can later highlight the different shapes of the mountainside with terrain paints to make it look like rocks jutting out of mossy growth or whatever you like.
- Beaches: If you're very careful with the Flatten tool, you can flatten the area just underneath the water's surface into a wide, shallow beach just underwater. You'll be able to vary the height of this beach with the terrain sculpting tools so you can make soft sand sculpted by the waves, and you can paint the underwater terrain too, to make a beautiful beach with interesting sand or rock just visible below the water. Doing this in very small, thin lines and painted correctly, it can look like a coral reef.
Terrain Painting
To give your terrain some detail and realism, you can paint the landscape with the terrains of your choosing. This is similar in many ways to the way the terrain paints work in-game, but there's some layering and performance issues to take into account.
Painting Basics
On the Paint panel, you'll find all of the controls you need to texture your world just the way you want it.
In the Layers list, you'll find the default textures used for your World. You'll have a different set of default textures depending on whether you chose Lush or Desert for your world. You can scroll through the list and see a thumbnail of each of the textures, and the type of footstep sound each one makes listed in parentheses.
Below that list is the Add Layer button. Clicking it will bring up a small window that allows you to add your own custom terrain paints. You can name your layer, choose the texture, and choose the footstep sound for the terrain. For more on custom terrains, see the Tips section.
To the right of Add Layer is the Clear button. Don't touch this button! That button resets your terrain to the default terrain texture - any painting you've done will be erased entirely! It can be useful if you've just started and don't like what you've made, but otherwise, leave it alone!
The long button beneath Add Layer and Clear is AutoPaint and really isn't that useful - it automatically paints the whole terrain in a rather blotchy messy way. Don't touch this button either unless you intend to - it can't be undone!
There are two sliders down beneath the set of buttons. The first is Routing Opacity. Slide this slider to the right to see unroutable areas. They will be highlighted in red. You may wish to paint these areas to look like rock or otherwise inaccessible terrain. The second slider is Color which only becomes available when Individual Layer Mode is ticked. Individual Layer Mode allows you to just modify a particular terrain texture without changing any of the others there too. The Color slider, when set to 0, acts as an eraser. Set to 100, it paints the terrain there instead with the chosen terrain paint.
The Visualize Layer tickbox shows the current chunk in black, with the currently selected layer in grey to white. This allows you to see exactly where you've painted a particular terrain.
At the middle and bottom of the panel are Brushes and Brush Parameters - these work exactly the same as they do when doing terrain sculpting, with the exception of the Shape dropdown, which you can set to Circle or Square here (it's greyed out for sculpting).
Tips
- Custom Terrain Paints:
Chunks and Boundaries
To view chunk boundaries: View > Show Chunk Boundaries.
All you really need to worry about with chunk boundaries is that you use no more than 8 terrain paints per chunk. You can have as many as you want for your whole world, but don't mix and match them too much within a single chunk, to improve performance. And of course, fewer is better - if you can get away with 3 or 4 rather than 8, do so!
Roads and Sidewalks
A good road system means your sims can get around your neighborhood quickly and easily, and will move in a way that looks natural.
Placing Roads
Adjusting Roads
Sidewalks
Tips
Layers
Layering is a way of grouping similar objects or items in your world. This improves performance and makes your world run better. Organizing stuff on layers is quite easy, so there's really no reason not to do it.
