Tutorials:Creating A World That Doesn't Suck Planning
Creating a World that Doesn't Suck Title Screen!
| Sculpting | Everything you need to know to sculpt your world. | Terrain Painting | Painting your world like a pro, with technique suggestions from creators. |
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| Advanced CAW | Painting your world like a pro, with technique suggestions from creators. | Custom Content | Setting up CAW's CC framework, CC links, and more. |
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DO NOT EDIT WITHOUT DIRECT PERMISSION FROM TVRDESIGNS OR QBUILDERZ. Create a World (CAW) was released in late 2009 by EA's development team. The program, which is used by creators around the world, is the major tool required to create a world in The Sims 3.
As with a lot of EA's releases, there was no documentation provided that taught technique or anything beyond the extreme basics of the program. Of the information provided, only navigation of the user interface and a brief description of its features were covered.
This guide has been created in the hopes that it could fill in where EA's lack of documentation abrubtly ended. It contains all the information that is, currently, known about CAW as well as some techniques, tips and hints on painting, sculpting, routing and many other un-addressed features of the program.
If you have any issues on something that isn't covered in this guide, you can either PM TVRdesigns or, alternatively, go to the CAW forum which you can find under Create > Sims 3 > Create-a-World. or, for convenience, here
Word of Warning
Before you commit to reading this guide or making a world, you need to understand something; CREATE A WORLD IS VERY TIME CONSUMING.
For a WELL DONE world, it can take months, even a year to finish. You cannot, in any way, create a decently sized, QUALITY world in under a month. Because every task in CAW is tedious, even a basic map without lots will take you a month. This isn't to say that its not fun, it's very fun! However, if you hate monotony or you cannot stand doing tasks over and over, CAW is really not for you.
Key
This article uses acronyms, phrases, and colour codes which are explained below.
- CAW Create a World - Just a shortening of the program's name.
- EIG Edit in Game - This is pretty self-explanatory, it is the version of The Sims 3 that functions directly with CAW to allow you to build lots for your world.
- RED TEXT in screenshots indicates something is done poorly.
- ORANGE/YELLOW TEXT in screenshots indicates something that is acceptable.
- GREEN TEXT in screenshots shows a good outcome!
Programs
- Create a World is the main program used in this material and can be found here at thesims3.com
- S3PE is used to change things like sky and ocean colour in .world files. It can be found here at simlogical
- Photoshop .dds Plugin is a useful little plugin for Photoshop which allows it to read files in a .dds format. Find it here. Please note that this plugin is free, but Photoshop is NOT.
Paint Programs
- Paint.net is one of a couple of programs that can be used to edit terrain and road texture files. These are generally in a .dds format. Find it here. Please note, this program is free.
- GIMP is another program that can be used to edit terrain and road texture files. Again, in .dds format. Find it here. Please note, this program is free.
- Photoshop is, perhaps, the most well known of the paint programs, but it has one major drawback. It costs. A lot.
