So... I needz help.
Here's the thread

Based on the real WitanHurst House (unfinished), this is the largest home I think I've built. By the way that price...it's already been depreciated. I'll just get to the details and let the residence speak for itself.

Article about real house.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...dible-home.html

Main House:
12 Bedrooms
13 Bathrooms
22 fireplaces (excuse me if I missed one)
3 Floor Grand Staircase
2 Floor Ballroom
2 Floor Drawing Room
2 Floor Dining Room

Orangery (For when your mogul sims want to be reminded of humbler times):
2 Bedrooms
2 Bathrooms

Basement:
Swimming Pool
Jacuzzi
2 Floor Theatre
Gym
Arcade
Laundry Room
Drawing Room
Security Room
Car Lift
Dining Room
Changing rooms
Shower rooms

15 Car Garage.............

Furnished: $1,200,000
Unfurnished: $660,000
Need I say more?

CC:
Cars in pictures by FreshPrince
Ivy: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=374328
Fridges: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=371316

I got nothing specific from the message sent,but here's what I'd like to improve on.
The basement
The outside/landscaping

"Since the house is a recreation of a real life building, it really needs some more work. The exterior needs a bit of tuning, and the interior needs more work regarding use of space and materials. I'd really recommend visiting the Creator Feedback Forum as its a great place to get help and opinions on your creation."

I would love to compare the original house, but your link is dead.

The pictures of your floorplans cover the whole lot, which is pointless, cos one can't see any detail / anything important from it. The only thing that I was able to see from the pics is most of the rooms being empty.
Zoom in till you can only see a few bits outside the house walls, but see more from the inside. Referance picture:



The interior shots you did were from weird angles, the hallway is extremely dark and looks like just one color. You can't see any debth / you get lost by starring at it, repaint it a bit. Casting is good, overdoing is bad.

The two story high room picture is also akward, due to the angle. Looking down at the room like a spider would makes me sick, but not interested in downloading the house. *afraifofheight*

You used like 4 or 5 different sorts of window that have very different styles and don't match in the slightest. For the dormer windows at the top of the roof, read about constrain floor elevation cheat and get them to 3/4 or 2/3 of their height. The house looks like being made out of frog position - try to make it simhead position. Frogposition = bad opposite from the already bad spider position. People wan to relax while browsing houses, not get reminded how they last felt in a roller-coaster.

Google can be your friend.

This link might be useful, includes floorplans and what not.
http://realestalker.blogspot.co.uk/...urst-house.html

There are plenty of pictures online too.

If he wants feedback, not my job to fix his links ;P
Google can be a friend, 99% of the time I consider it the enemy tho. Google is watching you - and saving way too much information, totally ignoring your right of privacy.

Sorry, didn't know my link was dead.
I'll do closer pics of the floor plan.
I agree, the rooms are large, and empty,but for me that adds to it to show the real size of it. May I remind that the house is 1.200.000 AFTER being lived in.
The Hallway is dark, and 1 color because the real hallway is, dark and 1 color.
Thanks though I'll look into the windows, and I do use CFE,but it's kinda diff for this house. Plz look at the original and tell me what you think afterwards.
There are no actual pictures of the original in this form though (only FX) because this is what it will look like after the remodeling.



http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:...Hr2HealsV2fIJGz

Hey

I did a little searching and found this, has nice views to the house all around (in addition to the cut-through you have) http://www.adamarchitecture.com/his...tanhurst_g.htm#

Your lot is recognizable with the reference pic, but there are a few things you could do.

First the dormers. Why are the walls black? You could also change the windows to something that matches the real house better. I'm not a fan of the tile in the yard, I'd suggest you used terrain paints instead. But that is a personal opinion.

I'd like you to post close up pictures of the floorplans, as you were suggested above and like you said you would, and could you also take a few shots all around the house (you can delete the trees and take pic in build mode, then just undo to get trees back), close enough, so we can see the architecture. It would be a lot easier to give you more feedback too!

Checking this layout I consider your lot too small. You defintely cramped the backside garden area for no reason.



In the pictures given above you can perfectly see what I meant, when I said lower the dormer windows. They aren't full height in reallife either.


Your standard Maxis / EA bricktones:


The original richer red and brown brick stones:


Try recolouring.

The hallway clearly in rl:



The stairs don't cover 3 floors, but actually two floors and aren't both fullsized, but the lower part is like 2/3 whilst the upper part is 1/3. Again constrainfloorelevation could be your friend, if you gave it a try.

Noone said uploading to mts would be easy, nor would building a house that people actually enjoy. We have plenty of tutorials that are easy to understand with pictures and everything. USE what you can find, read, inform yourself, take a clean lot, build a house, learn the cheats and explore the possibilities.

Don't be mad if the house takes more than a day to be finished. It took me close to a month just for the shell of a very tiny church on a 30*35 lot. Big log, big house, big potential - so take your time and make it well.

PS: Your orangerie is way too big in comparism to the rest of the house.

PPS: Tomorrow I'll give you a screenshot about possible adjustments. Bedtime for now.

Yea I saw, and had that original red color,but it was too boring for me having built others that are that exact brick color.
Thanks for the better pics of the hallway,the ones I've seen made the wood seem more red, I'll change that.
The Dormers: In every pic I found the dormers seemed much darker than the rest of the house, so I just went with a really dark green,but it's a bigger contrast in-game.
For the windows I just used what I could find. I don't really download and build as much anymore so I went with what I had.
O and the backyard...eh, I wasn't crazy about it. The sim can just go fun off into the lot behind the house

& a month.....This was I think 3 or 4 days. I'll touch it up & jazz but I'm not spending a month lol.

I'm going to work on making it more accurate, and all that. I'll keep this updated.

kathascha2
I can see you're trying to help the OP here, and your pictures and tips are really good,
but could you also consider the tone you post in a bit, as before your post, I don't see any kind of whine from the OP about how hard it would be to upload here, and so on.


Generally I feel you're sort of attacking the OP, and I wonder why that is. There are two ways to tell someone they should do something.

You need to do like this
VS
You could do this.

In the pictures given above you can perfectly see what I meant, when I said lower the dormer windows. They aren't full height in reallife either.
VS
I still think you should lower the dormers. The pictures show they are not full height in the real building either.

etc...

Think about it a little please. Little difference in how you word stuff can make a great difference.


Re the feedback given, I agree to the points. I just wanna see the feedback given in a nice tone.

It looks like you've used all 64x64 space on this? Frankly if you're gonna replicate such a big lot and upload here, you might just as well stop planning any social life for the next 4 or 5 weeks. It's gonna take that much time.

Another option of cause is to just skip the WitanHurst part of the house, and just build a big house. Then it may be rejected for wasting a lot of space for no apparent reason though.

Well i play the houses i make

You might consider doing a home "inspired by the WitanHurst home", and downsizing, or use the exterior elevations and re-design the interiors. Do you have World Adventures? Pulling out all the "treasure" items from buydebug and creating a museum around them can take up quite a bit of space, or doing the same with all the artwork and sculptures available in-game. Create a library with 2 or 3 study "nooks", a larger seating area, an area with one large table for group study, a computer cluster and 20 bookshelves. Having smaller rooms where the furniture fits better, will make the home more inviting; make it look less empty. In a home this size, you can add in those normally "useless" rooms, such as walk-in closets and pantries. Add the fire place chimneys back in, and enclose the stacks. Create alcoves displaying art and sculpture. Create "built-in" bookcases/desks/dressers/etc in the bedrooms, living room, dining room, etc. I'd also re-think some of the rooms' functions; for example the dining room seems quite far from the kitchen. Maybe switch the dining room with the sitting room, or the kitchen and sitting room. Group rooms like the children's bedrooms, a room for the nanny w/ private bath, a children's bathroom, and a playroom together so they feel related. Master suite could have: Master bedroom, sitting room, his and her baths, his and her walk-in closets/dressing rooms with a chaise or other seating in each. Have a master study seperate from the main library so dad(or mom) won't be disturbed when he/she brings work home.

Depending on what EP/SP/Store items you have, you may want to leave room for those items that you don't have, but others might, so they can add them in.

@armiel: Yeah, I'm really sorry about that. Wen I first read how he simply refused 75% of the given advice, I was angry, cos it appeared to me that he doesn't really want advice. I can totally understand that I might come across rude, I didn't want to be and for that I apologize. I've spent 3 or 4 hours with this topic, the house, the research and testing options in-game to help that bloke and was very dissapointed when I've read that he only wants feedback regarding the garden...

I agree with kattebijin aswell: If he just wants to create a big house, "inspired by" will make his life much easier, than trying to create an actual duplicate. Especially with the splitlevels everywhere (the shell, the hallway, the stairs) - they kept me from falling asleep, trying to figure out an acceptable solution. In the end I deceided it would be best to skip one or two floors. Noone needs 30+ bedrooms on a house, especially if it's not just decorative but meant to be a -played- house.

Will check on the progress later again, since I'm very curious where this leads to. Lots of potential here, but it really requires time to turn this into a diamond.

kattenijin: Most of the stuff you mentioned from the other expansions I haven't even seen. I think I'm going to send my sim to travel just to pay more attention to the surroundings (I just played to get a longer visa.) You've honestly given the most helpful advice so far; thanks for that.

kathascha2: Though it seems like it I'm honestly not just ignoring this advice. most of what people are saying I'm looking into it,and even trying it. For the brick I went into the game and recolored the front of the whole house, and still just didn't like it. I've already recolored all of the burgandy red wood in the house to a more accurate color, and I'm looking over my drawings (I have plans of every floor on graph paper) to see how the split leveling would work.

But like i said I spent 3 or 4 days on this. I feel like I've offended people by not spending a month on it,but honestly I build to play then move on so yea i half-ass it because it's a game, and it's not worth that time for me. I've had people ask for my homes so I was just uploading for people that would want bigger homes. (barely any on this site)

BTW Could I get some examples to these suggestions?

I don't think anyone's offended that you've only spent a few days on the house. We just see that it has awesome potential if you were to devote more time to it. I mean, why bother to upload something that you've "half-assed"? Why not make it the best it can be, regardless of the amount of effort? So what if it takes you 3 days or 3 months, it will be worth it in the end. The final product will get that much more appreciation from downloaders, and I can guarantee you that you'll be much happier with it.

Feedback:

-I think kattenijin makes an excellent point- It would be much simpler to build an "inspired by" house rather than an exact replica. I uploaded a Sim-ified version of the Kaufmann House, and it was the longest, most involved project I've ever worked on. It can be a huge pain in the ass to replicate a real life house, so by just using the WitanHurst house as your inspiration I think you would save yourself some time and effort and still have a great lot to upload.
-I agree with the point about the windows. They are very mismatched at the moment and don't flow well together. Try replacing the Chinese/Asian style windows with something more classic and traditional. Also, maybe this is just me, but I dislike how every floor has a different style of windows. I realize that's how it is on the real house, but it just doesn't work right now. Perhaps if you used windows that matched better?
-You need to use a lot more terrain paint. Dirt under the bushes, some variety to the grass, and so on. Also, I agree with armiel that it would look nicer to get rid of the tile on the exterior and replace it with a pavement style paint. It usually looks much more natural.
-We still need better pictures of the floor plan and the interior decor, so I'll refrain from commenting on it for now. Only, the indoor pool kind of gives me the creeps. I like the idea, but it's so dark! Perhaps lighten up the walls and floors and repaint the pool siding in something more stone-like and soothing. A Mediterranean theme might look neat down there, too.
-I would love to see some more flowers around your lot! It's all so green and uniform. Try adding some hydrangea bushes for a pop of color or even a few different kinds of trees (the cherry and magnolia trees look nice).
-The garage is far too big for my taste. Not even a family of eight Sims could make use of a 15 car garage! It just screams wasted space to me.

I can't think of much more to add right now. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with this place, as I know it will look fantastic with just a bit more work.

How the house would look after CFE 3/4 walls

I think the suggestions was to CFE the dormers (those black walled bits poking from the roof) to 3/4 wall height, not the floor below them.

When I wrote "dormer windows aren't full height" I meant dormer windows, not 3rd floor. The main split levels in the house are happening on the 2nd floor and the roof mainly. I took a grafics programm, a ruler and some paint to point out what I was talking about:



To get as close as possible, you would have to deal with lots of cfe. I dunno why you shortened the 3rd floor. It's the 2nd floor that's scramped. Since your house is nearly finished, I would leave floor 1,2,3 at standard height and only change the dormer (roof) windows.

Regarding the roof windows:
- bring down height
- repaint walls
- don't take a round window, maybe try this: dormer windows (EA windows repositioned)

For the windows in the lower floors, maybe this helps too: One tile window made two tile

Idk what u guys are talking about, I actually didn't touch the third floor. I only did the second. I didn't save it btw I just tried it out. Thanks for the windows. I'll mess around with it for a bit.
^in the back of yours btw. The bottom floor that you're saying is 1 length is actually 2 floors in the floor plan.
& Does anyone think it's worth rebuilding? (With Bigger backyard, CFE, and such)

Yeah, you're right, at the backside it's more like 1,5 for the Party room, then the balcony (1/4) and the next level. But too many differences in cfe in the front and backside will make it a pain to recreate in TS3. My best guess for getting close to reality: First floor full height, next floor 2/3, then full again and dormers half height. Ofc you can try to get even more cfe into it, but from my experience, too many splitlevels in one level make decorating rooms, tapestries etc a lot harder.

In your case, I would focus at the windows on the roof (dormers) and maybe exchange some windows to change the impression. Since you invested a lot of time with decorating the rooms already, I wouldn't waste too much time on cfe - especially if you write "inspired by" instead of "total recreation".

Whether it's worth rebuilding? Well, that's totally your choice.

I'm currently trying to build it myself, but it won't be finished anytime soon. I took a "test-lot" to mess around with possibilites. The floors / levels are giving me headaches, current plan is to downsize the 2nd floor, for the stairs in the entrance hall and the upper part of the party room. I'll prolly black out all of the other rooms and just continue with floor 3. There are so many bedroom that are redundant in my opinion, so it won't hurt to costumize the floorplan. The floorplan origins in reality, which isn't always Sim-compatible. So I'll throw in few more bathrooms, adjust some room aswell.

PS: For the bricks: You can find some tapestry ingame that has a small border at the side. If I was at home, I would tell you its name, since I'm at work tho, I'll just show you a picture to demonstrate what I mean:

You change the pattern inside the tapestry aswell, if you want a different look. Maybe something like this in a different color:
(took the picture from here, but you can surely find smth similar on a free site or create your own pattern. ^^

The thing with those floors are usually opposite from what you're thinking. The 1 and 3 floors are very high, while the one in the middle is regular height. They used to have very high ceilings in those days. You would need lots of reconstructive surgery to fix that thing. With the sides being different, I'm not sure it can be done nicely.

This picture from the royal castle of Stockholm shows the castle being 4 floors or something, it's actually closer to 7 or 8, and it's not equal all over.
http://www.kungahuset.se/images/18....stl-718-284.jpg

I would probably just go for 3 floors and then lower and widen those dormers. Since the front and back is not equal, a frieze might be good, but I don't know if you can find windows for that. To build half the house with 1/4 wall, and the other with 2/3 or something ... basically, you can't do them all.

Edit: perhaps you can build a regular floor in the middle and higher 1 and 3 on the back. Then you have a 1 tile gap in the middle of the house and add a frieze to the front. You have to do a lot of hiding though for the gap, and the ends. It can end in a cfe wall, but it will then need a 1 tile gap again on each side. Old houses often have internal staircases for different floor heights. You will have 3 floors on each side, so it shouldn't be too hard to make a connection.

I would probably give that up because of lack of windows to make it look good.

^^Sorry, I think it'd be better to just show the plans.
First floor:


Second floor:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DfezzS1ZN...anhurst_FP2.jpg

As you can see the second floor has rooms, and still counts the space above those areas.
Third:

Fourth:


BTW kathascha2 I think you should upload yours cus I doubt I'm going to do that much more work on mine.

@chilla:

I usually build shells and that's about it. I hate doing interior / gardening, so yours will look more finished than mine in any case.

From my upload history you can see that I uploaded nothing for the sims 3 - cos I started a lot of projects, but never finished them. A few castles among them, all having walls, doors, windows, tapestry and in the best case a few trees. I really don't like doing anything else :x

Just give lowering the dormers a try, get creative with the tapestries - check out other peoples houses to get inspired for the windows and enjoy yourself. As stated earlier, you DO have lots of potential - I enjoy your gardening in the front, don't give up because it starts to get challenging.

@Volvenom:

I did consider your point before you mentioned it. A few things that spoke against realising it in TS3:
- the front door
- the columns
- tapestry

Columns come in 1 wall, 2 wall, 3 wall sizes and nothing inbetween. So if I want the terrace in the back to look like on the pics, it's either 1 story or 2 story height. If I do them 2 story high, then I have to get the 3rd floor 2 stories high aswell - and have issues finding windows, that fit into that without looking like complete crap. For me it's easier to downsize level 2 and pick some dormer windows to get the optics, than upscaling everything. Especially with the hallway stairs.

If I was able to create my own costum content I might be able to get it really up-to-scale. Since I can't as of now, I sort of picked the columns / windows / doors first, then deceided what to take as "x=1". Since Sim-reality ain't real-reality, some compromises have to take place. =)

yea, making it in regular floor height is really the best option in any case. They need to be usable and the decoration has to fit.

The dormers could have been just dragged a bit into the roof, then they perhaps look more natural maybe?

Edit: Now I see, the column side is 2 floor high, and that staircase is far more complicated than I thought. I would just have to solve each problem as I go, and then just explain in the upload why it had to be like this. Your main problem will still be to make it look right.

Edit2: those grand rooms by the columns looks a bit odd on the second floor though. There is no room deviders on the 2, only the 1. Perhaps they are unusable space?