Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Toaster Strudel Addict
retired moderator
Original Poster
#1 Old 10th May 2018 at 2:47 PM Last edited by justJones : 12th May 2018 at 3:58 PM.
Default Beginner's Guide to Roofing in TS2
Creating a nice roof in the Sims 2 can be a bit tricky, even for veteran builders. So I have written this tutorial to help get those pesky pieces to submit to your will

Roof Types

There are several types of roofing available, each has it's own benefits and qualities:

Basic Roof Types
ThumbnailNameCommon Uses
Shed GabledMost often used for roof sections that butt up against a wall such as a porch roof
Shed HippedMost often used for roof sections that butt up against a wall such as a porch roof
Short GabledThis is a general purpose roof type for covering large sections
Long GabledThis is a general purpose roof type for covering large sections
HippedThis is a general purpose roof type for covering large sections
MansardThis roof is also for covering large sections but it has a flat area on top that can be covered in floor tile

There are also diagonal versions of each of these, except mansard. However, these are a bit trickier to use and I wouldn't really suggest them for beginners. I would definitely suggest playing around with them a bit once you get a good handle on the basics, but don't be surprised when they don't do what you want them to do.



Advanced Roof Types
ThumbnailNameCommon Uses
Short ConeThese often cover not square areas such as bay windows made with walls or octagonal rooms
Tall ConeThese often cover not square areas such as bay windows made with walls or octagonal rooms
DomeThese also cover not square areas or are sometimes used to create interest in the middle of a flat roof
Small OctagonalThese also cover not square areas and are often used in Victorian builds
Medium OctagonalThese also cover not square areas and are often used in Victorian builds
Large OctagonalThese also cover not square areas and are often used in Victorian builds

These are a bit more advanced, and we will not be using them in this tutorial. But I thought I'd still at least give you their common uses in the table.

We will not be discussing the pagoda roofing, as it is a more advanced and more specific topic. Perhaps I will do a pagoda roof tutorial as well, but this is not that one

Basics In Practice

Picking a Roof Style for your Building - or box in this example

Now we will take a look at the basic roof types in an actual build and further explore their uses.

This room is longer than it is wide. Which, as you see bellow, doesn't matter with a hipped roof. The same is true for a mansard roof.



However, this does make a difference with the two main types of gabled roof.

When using the short gabled roof on this room, the "roof side" is on the short side of the room. Hence it being named the short gabled roof.



You can see it results in a high roof at the standard 45 degree roof pitch. Which can be adjusted and we will discuss that a little later.

The long gabled roof "fits" this room better, because the room is long.



The roof side is on the long side of the room. It results in a lower roof at the standard pitch and looks generally more suited to this room.

Now, this is all well and good if you are roofing a square or rectangle, but that's not really what we're doing here. So let's go a little more in depth and look at a house with a less boxy shape.

The Gabled Roof Styles - and how to make them cooperate

I've added a room on either side of our previous room. Each is a different size and orientation.

We'll continue with gabled roof for now and talk a little more about hipped and mansard later.



The long gabled is what worked best for our first little room, so I've applied long gabled roof to each of our new sections as well. Covering each area separately.



Clearly, this isn't quite working. But the left side looks like it could work better if we drag it into the roof over the middle section.



By drawing the roof over to the middle of the central section, we have achieved a pretty decent blending of those two sections. It would possibly look even better if we lowered the pitch a little on the left section (which we will get to in a moment), but it's blending nicely without any gaps as it is. Now we need to do something about the gully between the middle and right sections. We learned from the left side, that it's best if we draw the adjoining section into the middle section.



This does look a little better, but there's still a gully between them. In some cases, with certain styles of buildings, this would be a decent look. But for every day houses, it's not too realistic. So the long gable is probably not the right choice here. Let's try the short gable shall we?



Well...it looks like we are definitely on to something, but that pesky roof pitch is up to no good again. So let's go ahead and deal with that little trouble maker now.

Roof Slope Angle - or pitch, as I call it

If you have M&G, or the UC which obviously includes M&G, you are in luck. This will be much easier, as M&G introduced the glorious Roof Angle Chooser. A beautiful little tool, the roof angle chooser allows us to simply use a slider to pick a roof angle, from 15 to 75 degrees. Mind you, often it will prevent you from using a super high slope for it's own reasons (not really sure what they are, but sometimes it tells you no). But realistically, for everyday houses, 15-45 is all you'd really need. You would want to go a bit higher if you were adding dormers, but again, that's another tutorial. We're here for the basics. So let's get back to it. I've decided to try a 30 degree angle on the right roof (a short gable if you'll recall from 2 minutes ago).



If you have M&G, or UC, just click the roof angle chooser (lit up green above), slide your way down to whatever angle you want to try and then click on the roof section you want to change. It's just that easy!

Now...if you don't have M&G or UC, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way, good old cheats.

There are two roof pitch cheats:

roofSlopeAngle [15-75] - This cheat changes the pitch of every roof section on the lot. It can be useful in some cases, particularly with hipped roofing, where you just want to raise or lower all roof sections. It's not the cheat we will be using here though.

individualRoofSlopeAngle [15-75] - Here's the cheat we want for our build. This one is a tad more complicated. With the roof tool open, enter the cheat with the pitch you want to try, so in our example we'd enter - individualRoofSlopeAngle 30 - Then, with the roof tool still selected, CTRL + ALT click the section of roof you want to change.

Now that we have our right side blending nicely into the middle, the left side looks a little odd. Even though it blends with the middle, it sits higher than the right side. So fiddle with it's pitch a bit till you find a good one. I ended up at 39 degrees making it's ridge pretty even with the ridge on the right side.



Now we have a nice little naked house with no way in or any windows...but boy, that roof looks lovely.

Hipped Roof - the equally but differently bothersome roof type

Hipped roof sections always blend together fine at the same angle, as long as you can pull them far enough into the adjoining sections.



However, it's not always a great look when the whole house uses hipped roof. It often ends up looking like you just used the auto roof option. As a matter of fact, if I use the auto hipped roof option on our little naked friend here, it looks exactly the same as it did when I added each section by hand. We can, in theory, use or new friend, roof slope angle adjusting, but that tends to create more problems.



At the top, we've now created a weird little gully. And at the bottom left the roof over the right most section is now sticking up through the central roof section. This is happening because in order to create the smooth transitions between sections in the first hipped roof pic, the right section had to be drawn all the way over to the left side of the middle section of the house.

Now is the time to introduce our new pal, the hipped shed roof.



You may be thinking, "But Jones, that looks even worse than it did before!" And you would be absolutely right. But give him a chance. He just needs some help fitting in. Since the shed roof styles are only half a roof, they don't need to be drawn as far over as their full counterparts. So now if we lower the pitch, I went with 25 degrees here, he blends in nicely without either of the issues his full sized friend had.



As with the gabled roof, the left side now looks a little wonky, so just fiddle with it's pitch till the two sides seem to be at the same height, I settled on 33 degrees for the left on this one.



Porches - and other odd little bits

Now that we've gotten a couple different nice looking base roof styles figured out, let's move on to porches.



Our new little friend already has his top hat on, just a long gable roof. But his bottom half is still exposed, so let's fix that.



A shed gable roof would definitely work on this little, straight porch. The pitch, however, is not working. Generally, for a porch roof, or any section of roof that butts up against a wall, 15-25 degrees is the good range for pitch. There could be certain circumstances where the style of a build would call for a steeper pitch, but generally 15-25 will do best. I've used 20 degrees bellow.



A shed hipped roof also works here, also set to 20 degrees.



Now to do something about the side bits. I've added a shed gable on the right, 20 degrees as well. A shed hipped would work here too, but I like the look of the shed gable with the top roof also being gable.



Now we could add a roof to the left side and call it a day. Like this short gable at 20 degrees. The short gable worked best in this instance because it's a bit to wide for the shed options.



I said we could do that and call it a day...not that we would. What I want to do is extend the porch to wrap around to the left side.



Wrap around porches are a little trickier than straight porches, because you have to make sure the corner pieces line up.



Shed gable will not work well with a wrap around porch, as you can see above. It is possible to combine shed gable and shed hipped to make the outer edges gable and the corner hipped, but that is more advanced and we wont be looking at that method here.

We learned earlier that hipped roof will usually blend fine as long as it's the same pitch, so here I've used two shed hipped at 20 degrees, drawn along each side till they fully overlap at the outer corner. On the left side, I started at the back of the actual room, to make everything smooth and simpler.



Wrap Up

That pretty much reaches the end of the tutorial. If you've made it this far, good for you! We're still going to take a look at a few examples of what we've learned, and talk about some general tips. But the "teaching" part is over.

Examples



With this one, I have used a long gable on the top, and shed gables on the side with the pitch set high enough that the tops of the shed gables reach to just under the edges of the long gable to create a sort of barn-like effect.

*Doors and windows from the Torrox build set by moune999



This one is very much like our friend from the porch section. Just a long gable on the top, and shed hipped on the three sides for the wrap around porch.



And this last one is a long gable on top of the larger section, with a short gable on the side and above the door. Shed hipped over the bay window.

Hopefully those examples gave you a decent idea of what you can do by mixing and matching the things we learned earlier

General Tips
  • Always build any roof that butts up against a wall before placing windows on that wall, or you will just have to remove them to build the roof.
  • Don't be afraid to mix and match different styles, but remember don't go too crazy.
  • Take a look at pictures of real houses, or even just houses in your real neighborhood, for inspiration and to see what a realistic roof might look like.
  • Try to think about how you will roof something as you are building walls. If your house has super crazy turns or lots of nooks and/or diagonal walls, it will be much harder to give it a nice roof.
  • A flat roof, made with floor tile and a low fence edge is always an option, just make sure it suits the overall build style. Stage can also be used to make some interesting flat roofing.

And That's It!
See you around! - Jones
Advertisement
Instructor
#2 Old 12th May 2018 at 5:07 PM
Thanks for this. I've been building since the game's first release, and very seldom have come up with a roof that looks correct. Kinda ironic, since I'm supposed to be a roofer IRL. Could be a good project for a rainy weekend, to go back and correct my mistakes.
Alchemist
#3 Old 12th May 2018 at 9:36 PM
Really nice, clear tutorial. Thank you very much!
Top Secret Researcher
#4 Old 13th May 2018 at 11:42 PM
Awesome, thanks! I always struggle with roofs the most. This may help make it a bit easier.
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#5 Old 22nd Jun 2018 at 2:24 AM
Great tutorial Jones, I just noticed that it was up.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Top Secret Researcher
#6 Old 26th Apr 2020 at 1:07 AM
I only just found this and am thankful. I hate doing roofs/rooves. I've been trying to make a house similar to the second-to-last picture, and it was doing my head in. Now I can attack it again. Cheers!
Back to top