SCULPTING: PLACING LOTS ON UNEVEN GROUND

Odds are you have probably had this problem by now. You place a Lot on a hill or even on a flat base and you end up with sharp edges or tears. This occurs when you sculpt around a Lot in CAW. The lot stays the same while the world's terrain changes shape as you sculpt and you end up with protruding edges. This is easily fixed.

Here is a common scenario. You have uneven terrain like below for example.

You then placed your lots on it. Your still ok.

Next you added your roads. Still no problems.

Here you can see that the Lot always takes the exact shape of the terrain. If you leave it like this, you have no problems. But let's say you decide to smooth out the road a bit because it's crooked.

The road is smooth now, but you have a sharp edge sticking out of the lot. What to do?

Easy Fix. Delete the Lot.

Click the UNDO button.

Presto! Problem Solved. The Lot as I said, will take the shape of the terrain. So it's all smooth again.

Here's another possible scenario. You want to place Half of the Lot up on the hill, while the other half is in the valley below. So you decide Sculpt the lot again to get it even.

You also try to smooth out the road

 Next thing you end up with a Big rip in your terrain.

Just apply the Easy Fix. Delete and Undo. The problem is easily solved. The Lot is smooth again.

 Another Scenario. You load your world to Edit in Game because you want to place or build your houses.

Let's start with placing a lot you have already made from the bin. The lot was built on Flat terrain and so when you place it on your sloped terrain, you get something like this below. It will take a little work, but this too can be easily fixed. Read this section carefully if you have houses on your crooked lots.

This is not a build tutorial blog, but I'll go into a little detail for this.

First I cleared off all objects from the area I want to fix.

Next, Open Terrain Tools under the Build Section (F3), Select Soften Terrain.

Smooth out the slope until its soft and even. If you are creative, you can squeeze in stairs in such a case. If the grid lines are straight, you're doing ok.

Now for the back area. Using the Raise terrain function, I raised the terrain to create a hill and to build up the terrain to match the rest of the world

Next I used the soften terrain function to smooth it all out. Using the gridlines as a guide.

And here we go! Nice and smooth.

 Here's is a before and after shot.

On the other hand, you may decide to build the lot from scratch. This, depending on how you look at it may be easier than placing a pre-made house on the lot.

Simply Use the Foundation tool and drag the foundation from the highest point to the lowest point

Now you can just go ahead and build.

But of course you don't want a big block for a foundation, so you can delete the excess to make something more attractive. This is just a rough example of course.

Anyway, save and return to CAW. As you can see the lot blends in nicely with the rest of the terrain.

So that's all there is is to it. Happy sculpting. The lesson here is ALWAYS USE THE EASY FIX, DELETE AND UNDO, if you do anything whatsoever to upset your lots. Be it sculpting or painting or even moving it around. You'll save yourself a lot of stress.