Placing copies in edit town mode question

[arclight]

I seem to have a contractor who has a 'The-End-Is-Nigh!' bunker complex. Nearly everytime I try to place a copy of a house I've made, it looks ... impacted, like it fell from the sky. I've tried leveling the lot before hand; I've tried actually building the home at a higher elevation; but most every time, it's half buried. A little help here would be appreciated; I'm not sim-ing a mole person. ( No CC, TS3, TS3:WA, TS3:HEL, TS3:A, TS3:FLS)

[wildredchild]

Hi arclight and welcome to the forum.  Are you placing these homes on a pre-made EA lot that comes with your particular town?  Are you building these homes on pre-made EA lots?  If the answer to these questions is yes, then I am stumped.

[arclight]

Both pre-made and placed by myself; right now I'm dealing with the opposite problem (strange, I know) My house is "perched" on the lot. As you can see, I've had to 'lower' my garage, and before the placement, there were no stairs; where the flame-torchy-guys are was ground level. I really wish there was some sort of auto adjust to this thing

[caliban]

I think it looks kinda rad like that, in your last picture.
Gives it a very cool multi-level effect.

Still frustrating since it's not what you intended, but does look neat.

Sorry I have no suggestions for a fix : \

[Joria]

It looks like you've placed you house on a slope, which isn't always visible when you choose a lot, or place a lot.  Smoothing the lot beforehand  doesn't work.  So, what you do is put your house in place and use the terrain tool that smooths/softens the edges.  It will take a bit of work and your house STILL might not look right.  The best way I've found is to put the house on a lot that is too big for it.  So if the intended house was a 30x20 make or use a lot that is the next size up.  This will place the house right in the middle of that lot so your path to the house and/or driveway will have to be extended but it will make the edge smoothing easier and more normal looking.  Otherwise your house winds up either sunk in the ground, perched on a steep, angular shelf, or both depending on the lay of the land.

 I'm running into this a lot as I remodel Twinbrook to suit my aesthetic desires.  Swamps do not appeal to me so I'm trying to turn it back into a viable and attractive community.  It's quite a challenge and means adding a lot of lots where there were none.

[arclight]

Aye, it is frustrating; I too think that multi-level look looks cool, and it would be if I could just hit that magic pixel and line it up with the level above it  Otherwise, Joria is right; much landscaping with the soften edge tool ... and it *still* doesnt have that proffesional look that im aiming for

[Joria]

It really is hard to do.  Sometimes you can only go so far than hide edges with landscaping.