Sims 3 Create A World ( CAW ) dive spots done my way guide

[jet4571]

 Best thing to do for dive spots in CAW well before placing the lot or EIG(Edit In Game) is place a radio tower in the ocean where you want the dive spot. If it is less than half underwater fly the camera under water and start awkward angle lowering the terrain and moving the tower until it is half under water. Use the flatten brush and flatten the undersea to that level a distance from shore then use the smooth/lower/raise brush to make a gradual transition from the shoreline to that flattened zone. Use raise and lower plus smoothing to make the sea bed surrounding where the dive spot will be to anything but flat(64x64 lot size is a good distance to randomize the sea floor around a dive spot so you don't need to do all of it. You can but nobody will se it). then terrain paint the sea bed the dark sand texture and feather it to the blue where the blue starts to disappear in CAW due to water depth if you used the blue. Ocean has proper depth for a dive spot, base sand texture in the dive spot and surrounding seabed, blue if you used it for that really fake tropical look still visible from the air and no dark spot in the ocean where the dive spot is. Perfect.

 Now delete the tower and place a 64x64 lot where it was and set it as a dive spot in CAW. (it becomes invisible unless you have the grid turned on in CAW so don't worry about it being missing in CAW later). Now save and edit in Game. Edit Town and select the dive spot, name it right away so even if you forget to after it will be done but I usually come up with a better name when making the lot and need to change it(better safe than sorry). Then edit the lot. As soon as the camera is done flying in DO NOT move it, instead go to the misc. section in Buydebug and filter for Island Paradise. Grab the dive spot buoy and place it roughly in the center of your screen, the center of your screen is the center of the lot in build/buy which is why you don't move the camera right away and you cannot see the borders of the lot from the surface making placing it problematic later. Ctrl+Shift+click the buoy and set the dive level you want.

 Next go down one level (like going to a basement) and first things first use the sand terrain paints to breakup the solid dark sand you painted in CAW, break it up not cover it as this is your base texture. Start with the combed sand, light sand, and last gritty sand. Fast taps with the mouse button or hold it down and quickly wave it about randomly. Don't go overboard, you just want it to be not all dark sand but mostly. And feather the dark sand last around the edges with light taps over really dark or light spots. Do not use the seafloor paint from island Paradise yet or the blue one ever in a dive spot. Best to never use the blue one in my opinion.

 Now go back to edit world and then back into build/buy to reset the camera to center. Drop down and start sculpting the terrain with the initial spot being centered under the buoy for the main part of the dive spot. Sculpt close to the edges of the lot but not all the way to it so it transitions nicely to the CAW sculpted terrain  and makes it fit into the world as a natural interesting location for scuba. Around the perimeter of the lot lightly decorate with fewer decorations near the edges so it blends into the world a bit better.

 Next decorate the main attraction center(only add caves if you will have multiple dive spots as they can be buggy and send your sim to shore). In buydebug underwater objects and in community objects Misc. section of the build menu has the main things to place. You can add stuff from any section if it tickles your fancy such as a stove and Ctrl+Shift+Click to set it's charred state to... well charred.  Decorate from the center outwards but leave spots of interest near the perimeter of the lot for exploration. Once all the corals and whatnot are placed you want to go into the Misc. section of buydebug and add an underwater treasure chest or two. Ctrl+Shift+click the chest to set the diving level the chest can be opened at and then the treasure content. Have 1 chest someplace near the main attraction in the center with loot that fits the dive spots level plus opened at or below that level and one somewhat hidden near the perimeter with higher level loot and lock status. Next you want to add bottle and shell spawners from RGM, sea life from the fish section, and harvestable kelp from the garden plants section of buydebug. Place sharks only in dive level appropriate dive spots and always Ctrl+Shift+Click them to set the amount to spawn(default is 5 making 20 sharks if you placed 4 of the spawners) and the species.

 Now we have the basics done and it's time for detail work to make it pretty, this is when the Island Paradise ocean floor terrain paint comes in. Paint splotches of that under rocks and coral feathered out to the base sand and use the other sand colors as well when needed. the ocean floor should be sand but sand under coral and rocks is not very pleasing to look at, it blends the rocks and coral into the environment and that's what you are doing. Once the texture pass is complete go back through everything of interest and add/adjust details as it will all look different than when first placed. Then go back through once again and tweak everything as some details may have been missed and just don't look right. Workflow in layers is best! Base sand breakup pass, terrain sculpt pass, initial decoration pass, terrain paint pass, detail + decorate again pass, and final check/tweak pass.

 If done right you should have a nice dive spot with a main attraction under the buoy that transitions to the undecorated rest of the ocean and all of it worth exploring because a chest might be in a hole near the corner of the lot with an anchor only visible from from a distance. Should have plenty of collectables to find and a couple treasure chests atleast.. From the air the dive spot shouldn't be noticeable with the seabed going from sandy shores to blue if you used it and to dark sand when the depths make the blue impossible to see. Now it's ready for saving and exporting to be tested, which most likely means tweaking it in Build/buy once again lol.

 Once you have a couple dive spots in your world add the caves to them if they were not planned from the start and link the caves to the other dive spots from the Ctrl+Shift+Click options.

 For shorelines... Once the shore is done before placing shoreline lots paint the dark sand at max settings right up to the water line. Next go with the light sand at 10 or 15 scale and 10/10 for the other two settings and paint a line where the edge of the brush touches the water line and again halfway between the initial paint and the water line, continue for all the shoreline as well as light sand the beaches much further in(don't worry about jagged dark sand paint showing at the water edge, that's for when you are done with the light sand). Now using the same brush settings you swap to the dark sand and make a pass or two directly on the shoreline where the water meets land. One maybe two passes until the jagged base dark sand edges blends in. Now you have sand along the shore that goes from wet to dry that's ready for the game or as a base for when details are added and/or they need some other ground texturing. If you use the blue seabed texture for a tropical look feather the dark sand and blue texture some distance from shore so it looks like sand from shore.  Honestly I would never use the blue one since it makes the ocean look as fake as Sims 4 grass that looks like spilled green paint. A few random splotches of gritty or combed sand along the shore also looks good but if overdone doesn't look good so be subtle with the detail painting.

 If all was done right with terrain paints it means you did little to correct mistakes, make the oops into random variations. Going to be many of them where your painting overlaps each other so try to make them fit as randomness rather than try for perfection since no shoreline is ever perfect. Just don't sneeze when painting the initial dark sand and put a strip of it down right across your central park and city hall lots. That's just bad and I did it with finished lots lol. 

 

*Edit, 

 Since we are talking oceans and shores. You see suggestions for adding WAVES to your shorelines all over the internet. Yeah makes sense, you want WAVES lapping your shores. So you filter Metadata and check Effects for waves, there are some so you line your whole 1k mile shoreline  island with them.... to never see a one of them in the game. If you want waves lapping your shores you need to filter "Surf" instead of "Wave" because EA is stupid and thinks surf and waves are completely different and yet the same but backwards in the metadata search. Surf is the big waves surfers desire, everything else is a wave.