Tutorial : How to make roads with car parking space
When I first started using the create a world tool, I immediatly wanted to make roads with car parking space. The only world where I had seen these types of roads were in Boroughsburg by potato-ballad-sims. So, I searched up the internet as one would do when you don't know how to do something and nothing until I found this post by krrank on their forum. I already knew how to make roads at that time. In fact, it was only when I saw her showcase of dirt roads, that I saw how there was a way to make roads larger to then add cars parked on the side.
Now, because I haven't found a proper tutorial on how to actually do that, I decided to make my own tutorial and share how I managed to do it. It's not as perfect as Boroughsburg in term of sidewalk intersections (because I'm not the best at texture editing) but enough to have the look of parked cars, which can make a town look so much more lively.
What I'm assuming before this tutorial :
You're familiar with the CAW tool
you know how to place roads
you know how to create roads using textures provided by EA or CC road textures
You know how to add custom content for CAW (only applicable if you don't own the university EP)
The downside
The only downside with these roads is that sims will walk/run through the cars when going somewhere because we're basically using the sidewalk as parking space. To balance that out, I suggest using hybrid roads in your world : normal roads with normal sidewalks and roads with parking space.
On the left we have a road with car parking space
On the right a normal road with sidewalks
Step 1 : Choosing your road textures
Example of what it should look like :
Possible question #1
" Okay but there's no sidewalk now, what do I do ? " : Simple ! Place independent sidewalks on the side. A bit like this (ignore the fact that this is not completly aligned to the grid) :
Step 2 : Placing cars on the road
I highly suggest using cars that are meant for decoration and aren't high poly. If you're using super CAW do not use the drivable cars that can be bought in game. In my case, I used the debug cars from the university EP meant for decoration and lowered them until it hid the parking curb. If you don't have the university EP, the world CC from Boroughsburg includes deco cars used for the purpose of parked deco cars !
Do not put too many cars on the roads (I only do it because I do not care since I'm making my own personal world, but if you intend to share the world you're making, limit the cars that you put on the streets)
How to hide the parking curb (for university cars) :
Lower your car's position (Y axis, green line) to : 15,4 - (Good enough height to hide the concrete curb and only hides a tiny bit of the car's wheels)
Don't forget to rotate (Y axis) the cars to the right direction. In fact, to be 100% accurate in the rotation placement of your cars, you can write the exact degree in the board that appears when you select an object. So, basically : 90 / -90 OR 180 / -180
Possible question #2
"In what direction should I rotate the cars ?" : Here's a reminder of traffic directions in game :
And that's about it. Hope this will be useful to anyone who was wondering how to make larger roads and add cars parked directly on the street :)
Sims 3 Distant Terrains in World Machine - Tips and Thoughts
disclaimer: This process is experimental for me! Follow my advice at your own risk! I am pretty confident in it though.
This all assumes you are competent at CAW, have looked elsewhere ie @potato-ballad-sims or searched the web to figure out World Machine. There may be some limitations with some versions of World Machine. I think this is do-able for those who don’t really use World Machine but know their way around CAW and cc creation. Meshing skills not really needed. Milkshape is needed.
This is in 3 parts:
1 - Scale in World Machine and Create a World (really, the most important part)
2 - Generating Terrain: Design and Export
3 - Reverse Engineering a Distant Terrain (coming later! check back here later)
In this flurry of customizing worlds to our own personal liking:
The MTS thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=469942
handy video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pJK3F8dreI
If you are switching out the terrain files, you will notice the terrain color on lots does not change accordingly. There is a simple fix for this: Find your .world file in your CAW User Tool Data/Worlds folder. Make a backup copy of it and put it elsewhere. Open the original in S3PE, sort by tag, and find all unnamed _img files. DELETE these. Open the world back up in CAW and save. This will force the lots to regenerate in appearance. This is useful if their LOD files become corrupted, too, which often happens.
Keep in mind that when you save an existing world in CAW, any custom ini files and color ramps and possibly custom recolors of rabbitholes and what not might very well drop out of the world file after saving. You can go back into the original .world file in S3PE (from before you ever opened up the world in CAW) and find all those files, and reimport them into your new version of this world. Do this after you've edited everything you want and have saved it for the final time. Save, quit, import your custom recolor and ini files, and then open CAW and export the world (don't save again before exporting the world! that might make those files drop out, in which case you just reimport them).
