Creating Roof Skylight Windows

Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Introduction
This tutorial will take you step by step creating a simple building with roof skylights.
Anyone should be able to use this tutorial. It is detailed enough so that, even if you’ve never used
any building cheats before, you will still be able to follow this tutorial.
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 1 – What you will need.
Transparent floor tiles:
If you don’t have any, I strongly recommend the sets made by MissyZ. I used “Set 1” available
from here: http://www.thesimsresource.com/artists/MissyZ/downloads/sims2/sets?ID=150205
Window trim:
this is optional but adds to the effect of skylight window frames. I used my ‘Tubular Fences’
available from here:
http://www.thesimsresource.com/artists/cyclonesue/downloads/sims2/sets?ID=212151
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 2 – Create your building base.
You can create any size you like, but if you wish to follow this tutorial precisely, I’ve set out the
dimensions I used…
Ground floor: 14 tiles wide by 8 tiles deep
Upper floor: Two blocks of 4 tiles wide by 2 tiles deep
I have inset these blocks 1 tile in from both edges of the ground floor level. On top of the upper
floor blocks, I have added transparent tiles and three vertical stripes of black trim fence to each to
create the illusion of frames.
Because the fence trim I’m using protrudes very slightly through the
finished roof, I’ve added trim to the three vertical inner panes only.
You can see this more clearly in the finished skylight on the right.
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 3 – Build a lower bed wall in front of the building
Pick a square close to the front of your building and lower all four corners of it by 6 clicks exactly.
You don’t need to add a floor tile; I just used that so you could see where I lowered my square…
Starting from your lowered tile, draw a complete wall along the front side of your building.
Make this wall the same number of levels as your building (in our case, just two floor levels, so
just two wall heights needed)…
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 4 - Enter the constrainFloorElevation cheat.
Now you need to open the CHEAT WINDOW.
To do this, press the CTRL-SHIFT-C keys on your keyboard. This will open a white strip at the
top of the screen. In this window, type: boolprop constrainFloorElevation false
Then press the ENTER key to enter the cheat and close the cheat window.
About this cheat: By default, floor levels are locked, regardless of nearby walls of differing
heights in the vicinity. The constrainFloorElevation (CFE) cheat changes this so that floor levels
are bent by nearby walls that aren’t of the same height. The CFE cheat is what we use to create
curved bridges, glass domes and all sorts of other advanced building techniques.
Caution: with this cheat entered, walls and floors are affected by any alterations you make to the
terrain levels below.
Step 5 - Slope the first part of the skylight glass.
Paint a temporary floor tile from the top of your new temporary wall to the edge of your upper level
boxes.
Be careful not to paint over your transparent glass. Just add floor tiles up to the edge. If you have
typed in the CFE cheat correctly, the nearest row of glass tiles will be lowered to the height of your
temporary wall. Congratulations: that’s the first part done!
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 6 – Lower the temporary wall another 6 clicks.
Now lower the land underneath your temporary wall ANOTHER 6 clicks, making the wall a total 12
clicks lower than your building. Be careful not to lower the land too close to your building,
otherwise the walls and floor levels will dip into your lowered space!
Step 7 – Slope the remaining part of the skylight panes.
This time, add floor tiles that stop one tile
short of your skylights.
If you go right to the edge, you’ll flatten the
front row of glass panes completely,
destroying the slope you made in the last step.
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 8 – Turn off the CFE cheat and tidy up.
Right – we’ve done with the CFE cheat so let’s set it back to ‘true’.
To do this, press the CTRL-SHIFT-C keys on your keyboard. This will open a white strip at the
top of the screen. In this window, type: boolprop constrainFloorElevation true
Then press the ENTER key to enter the cheat and close the cheat window.
Remove all your temporary floor tiles and walls, and level the terrain back to normal. Your
building should now look like this…
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 9 – Add an upper room to support the roof.
Working from the outside edge of your lower level, count three squares in from both front and
back.
Any tiles not within the first three squares* will need a supporting room for a higher level. For my
building, the middle two rows are not within the first three tiles from the outside edges of my
building, so I’ve drawn a supporting room around these squares.
If you use the roof cheat: roofslopeangle 56.3, you can pitch the roof much more steeply so that
the slope only occupies TWO squares before reaching the next storey. This means your new
upper room would need to encompass all tiles not within the first TWO squares of the outside
edges of your building.
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 10 – Add some gables.
Using the short gable roof tool, place roof gables everywhere other than the rows of squares
covered by or aligned with your skylights…
The end result should look like this…
.
.
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 11 – Add a top roof ridge.
Now, using the long gable roof tool, create a long gable that covers your upper supporting room.
This should line up perfectly with the gables you created in the previous step.
Step 12 - Add gabled roof beneath the skylights.
Use the Shed Gable roof tool to add a line of roof beneath each skylight…
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 13 - Repeat the same for the reverse.
Use the Shed Gable roof tool to fill the empty gaps in the opposite roof slope.
Tip: take the roof all the way up to the top roof ridge in order to avoid any untidy roof seams
(see box-out below)...
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 14 – Remove excess roof walls.
Time to tidy up! All those bits of roof will have created lots of inner walls that we don’t actually
require. You might want to leave some behind for effect, but I’m going to remove ALL my inner
walls to leave a clear roof space…
From this…
To this…
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Creating Roof Skylight Windows
By CycloneSue, 30 May 2006
Step 15 – End result.
Congratulations! You’ve finished. Now decorate to add your finishing touches.
The building we’ve created is a very simple contemporary home to demonstrate the technique of
creating roof skylights, but you can repeat this for any size and shape building.
Have fun!
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