That is a good start. Do you have some program to put names to the room with?. If you take a picture from straight above and put text on top in Photoshop or Gimp or whatever.

It looks to me like you're planning a different drive courtyard than the regular arrive entrance? I have never tried that. We don't really cherish the cars that much where I live. The local elected politicians would rather ban the car all together. Good thing I don't have a car :D

Yes, that house that is my real life inspiration has that courtyard, and also a driveway. Very big driveway.

That house is in America, so yeah - it's big and fancy, and expensive ( I am not from America, and never seen the house, but I read a lot about it when researching ).

The house is actually going to be diagonally on the lot, as the real one kind of is too. I am just a little worried about how that will affect the stairs. I'll have to see about that.

I don't have a car either.. or a drivers license. All that seems very scary to me

When I will have the full floor plan, I will put on the rooms.

Volvenom, I have a question for you.

Do you know if there's any place to get those Luna's decor curved stairs?
Just as I was about to give in and try them, I realized the original link wasn't working anymore.

Edit: I think I found them. Gotta check in-game though.

Well now I'm curious as to what the inspiration home is?

Building the house diagonally on the lot can be a real pain as far as staircases (and also roofs) are concerned, but if you lay it out so that the rooms with the staircases in are orientated to allow them to go in the direction they need to go you should be fine. It just requires a little extra thinking. But the layout you've put together so far looks very good.

Yeah, I actually dropped the diagonal house idea. I realized I could no longer get the necessary sizes for the rooms and I wasn't inspired enough to keep going with that.

Edit: I'll share some pics of the IRL house at some point.

I have some dilemmas I want to share before I am off to bed.

1) To be or not to be: Luna's stairs? I tried them, as you can tell by the picture, but I had to have 5 step foundation (plus I will have two step foundation for all of the house). I tried to put regular stairs underneath, but these didn't hide them. So, these can be purely for the eye, not for the feet. Or perhaps I should just go with the winding stairs from my very, very old previous pictures, but only like half of it?

2) To be or not to be: Master Clutter walk in closet? The IRL house actually have two of such, but since we in sims have no real use for them other than clutter them with decor cc for the eye, I already got rid of one. Shall I get rid of the other one too, if the other possible solution is a much cooler use of space for actual use?

I am pretty sure I had something else to ask, but I can't seem to remember. Oh well, it'll just have to wait then.

Edit:

3) Do we have in TS3 a poker table like we had in TS2? Perhaps a conversion/ new creation? Preferably working one.
(I mean the octagonal-ity of the table. I know of the Store stuff. Guess I just feelin' nostalgic or something, just read a whole thread on TS2 items, there was some good stuff there )

1. Lunas stairs can work if you put them on ground. I lifted the ground and put it close to the stairs all the way, so the sims actually walks on ground and not on the stairs. Then I had a stair from the floor the stair leads from and to the ground under the staircase. I cover the edges with planting.

2. A wic can work as a dressingroom if you put dressers in there. I've done that a few times.

3. I used the store table in my Stranda world. I think that's the only one.

1) But I will also have a foundation for the house itself. Can that work then? Presumably without the foundation under the stairs, but instead with raised terrain?

2) Alright, that sounds good.

3) Hmm.. I'll have to check out other possibilities then. I already found one, so hopefully I'll be able to get what I want.

On the Luna staircase it's a level of work and is it really worth it.

It looks to me like you have to lift the ground through the hole kind of, and have staircase on both the 1 and 2 floor for the sims to access floorlevels. I can't really see what it looks like on my phone. Just remember the floors, you can't really cheat your way through the floors like that. You have to go like ground-1floor-2floor etc. There's no way around that.

You could of course shape the foundation like you would the ground with cfe, it just takes some skills.

Alright, I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow.

First of all, let me say that I really, really liked what you had in the previous version, with the rounded stairs inside, the multi-level exterior, and just about everything about it! I love the idea of a garden-type entrance with the bushes around it. But yes, I agree, it was a bit too small. I would have suggested to make a backup of the thing before bulldozing it, though... But that's just what I do. Because I tend to take inspiration from my past and pictures. :3

As for the new version, I feel like Luna's staircase almost looks like a joke (no offense) for this build, unless you plan on making it a fantasy castle. The way the stairs are shaped -- wide, then thin, then wide again -- looks kind of ridiculous to me. In that sense, I am not a fan of those stairs. I could have sworn that I had some of my own half-curved stairs downloaded that were functional, but I'd have to go look... Then again, I have no experience with Luna's staircase, so I myself don't entirely have a say in how it works, I think...

I can't wait to see what you come up with for this new version of the castle.

Thank you! I actually have a backup of that previous idea. Several actually. Because while I was still in the middle of that idea. I had another idea how I could use the same exterior. And yes, I also liked the previous version, and the ideas I had about it, so I will probably go back to it after I am done with this one, because in the end, I made quite good exterior, if I can say so myself.

Yeah, I don't know yet if I will be using them. All that jazz with terrain tweaking for decoration doesn't much appeal to me. and the idea about decorative stairs is more than beyond me, but in my house at least there are more than one stairs, so one decorative wouldn't be the end of my sims world. I guess it all depends on my mood when I will go to my build again.
Also, the entrance hallway came out kind of small here, so that's also something I'll take in account when thinking about stairs.

I think it's safe to call this a mansion now. I've already dubbed it The Luxard Mansion in my head, as per the surname of my yet non-existent sims who will live there

This is how one of those staircases looks in a building and frankly I think it's very nice, otherwise I wouldn't use them. There is different versions of them and I used the one that would fit my build.

[IMG]140114 Playtesting by Volvenom, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]140114 Ancient Floorplan by Volvenom, on Flickr[/IMG]

The main reason why the staircase looks a bit odd is well known in art, and is called foreshortening. It's the picture angle that makes it look a bit odd. The real look of this thing will have to be taken from the front. What it looks like in the end depends on the structure around it. I would recommend though that KittyCatInDaWoods takes a picture from the front to see if another version of the staircase might be better for you. You have to think about how it will look in the room. The real challenge with these staircases from Luna though, is how to make them work for the sims, or if you choose to use them as only a show item. Luna's items are very often like these, you really have to work it out.

Foreshortening: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/pai...eshortening.htm

Silent Wolf 101 how is your build going?

Edit: I have found that house's CC ... I wonder if that is the escalinata Lisa files?

So, I played around with the stairs a bit. See below what I came up with.

I am still unsure of how I could make Luna's stairs work on foundation house, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I am still working on the basic floor plans. I've actually done with the second floor now, will move down into the basement and when I'm done there, I'll post pictures.
And yes, I kind of dropped the stairs-facing-away-from-the-entrance thing, as I felt that didn't seemed like a good idea.

Of the winding stairs, I guess I like the third version better. Luna's stairs do look good, I admit. Also, them facing the entrance works a lot better then previous version.

Edit: Volvenom, if you mean Luna's stairs, then yes, those you have there are escalinata lisa.

I guess the inner part of that blue staircase can be used? ... well, in that case that's where it ends up then. Do you want a usable staircase or just for show. Can't you get the Luna stairs a bit lower perhaps. I seem to remember they don't really fit quite on the wall height. She had a reason for that, it just didn't fit in most cases. I would say the Luna staircase needs more room, it needs to sit beside the door, not in the middle seen from the entrance I think. That applies possibly to the blue one as well. I would have liked that entrance hall to be more square, but I guess it's how your inspiration floorplan is? Such a long winding hallway is going to eat up a lot of attention. It's much easier to decorate a square'ish room, such a long hallway your eyes never stops and you wonder what's in the end. You could perhaps put up a wall there?

Thanks for the staircase name, I'll have to update and upload at some point. All the things I need to do.

What I would possibly try around that Luna staircase is to use a foundation and plopp it down between in the middle of those walls with cfe on, you will then end up with plattform you could use and potentially you could make a gradual transition with it for the upper floor. You will end up with twisted walls all over the place and have to be prepared for a lot of clean up. Just save it as a new save and use it to test in.

Volvenom, the curved piece of the blue staircase is decorative, but the inner part is real usable stairs. They are from Now and Then Century Manor store set.
That height that I have in those pictures is how much Luna's stairs needed to perfectly align with the floor on the second floor. Yeah, the entrance hallway came out a little too small for my liking. Actually, almost everything did, because IRL house is huge. That was part of reason I wanted to make the house diagonally - I was hoping to get a little bit more room to work with. Yeah, IRL house has that hallway in one piece, but I guess I could put a wall there.
Okay, I'l try that with Luna's stairs.

Okay, so here comes the finally competed floor plans.

And here are few links with pictures of IRL mansion:
1) http://homesoftherich.net/2015/04/t...on/#prettyPhoto (with floor plans)
2) http://homesoftherich.net/2013/08/u...nj/#prettyPhoto (few aerial pictures)
3) https://www.jamesedition.com/real_e...mansion-1020544 (last picture shows the whole property from the air)

My floor plans don't align with the original ones perfectly. The first floor is more similar then the second. Second floor I just made by my own thoughts of where I want what rooms. Master bedroom is still in the same place. Also, on the first floor the front garage of IRL house matched 5-car garage in-game, which I actually had in first (?) picture that I posted of this house, but I had to make that smaller, as I hadn't yet made the whole house and run out of space.

Also, I might join the ballroom and the living room as I really dislike the wall that separates them.

Backyard is only a draft, since I don't have the necessary raised terrain for it. And it's of course made smaller.

Oh well, you have given yourself a 2 year project lol. In that case I think you should stick to the simpler staircase and make that work. The reason why I say that is for the end size and what most computers can handle. Unless you have a monster of a computer this is going to destroy it lol. I often find it better to either have a small complicated build, or a big simple one, just because of the workload.

I suspect that staircase is as Luna's stuff usually is, really big filesize

Thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I guess I should do a bit more research before commenting on something. XD What you have there is rather gorgeous! Though it is a little too curved for my tastes. I might have to play around with Luna's Staircase sometime.

@KittyCatInDaWoods


Ohhhh, I quite like the layout so far! I'm excited to see more of what you do with the place.

I like what you have done so far, great work.

Thank you! I took some while off building to play the game a little, but now I hope to have some updates soon.

Thank you!

Hi! So I finally returned to building.

Since I had yet to build to real version of the house (on the foundation) that's what I did, and now I have a problem with said foundation.

The house has an attached garage, but the foundation creates a problem because I need a second floor above the garage as well and I can't make it work. The part with foundation can be connected with garage that has no foundation, but there are two options of what happens when garage wall and the room wall (that is on top of foundation) connect:
1) there is a hole in the wall
or
2) the floor on the first floor (on foundation) gets warped, and leveling it out creates a hole in the two connecting walls (room and garage).
(see the pictures for more clear idea what I mean )

And second floor is also impossible to make above the garage due to those holes.

Is there any way to make this work? Should I just flatten all the garage walls down to create a foundation?

Hi KittyCat
I am happy to see you working on the castle again. I often take breaks from my projects so as not to burn out.

Here is a YouTube vid on building garages without foundations. Take a look and see if it helps. If not, post back. Good luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8aXkAlhnZU

@attuned

The tutorial is very helpful, though not sure if it will work me.
Anyway, see pictures for I what I came up with.

I used foundation for garage 1 as the tutorial said, but then I realized that I don't need foundation in there, since I have rooms on foundation next to the garages. Thence, for garage 2 I used walls, lowered at the foundation height (which for this build is 3 steps high).

If there is no room above the garage, the tutorial works, the roof kind of disappears from inside of the garage, though it still clips through the side walls and shows on the outside as well.

When there is a room above the garage though, the roof stays inside the garage. Deleting it, deletes the wall in front of the garage, necessary for the doors. Ordinary wall built there is not high enough.

Anyway, not sure what to do, go with or perhaps there is something else I can try? Something that preferably works with a second floor above garage.