These are custom water terrain paints and you can get such (and hundreds of various terrains) by searching at the downloads build section ( ground cover) .Apart from here, any site with custom content , especially building related sites, have custom terrains. I use many from www.sterlingsims2.com

Thanks everyone

Corvi

yes thats good and easy to follow but i have one question, where do you get the water, coral, and rock terrain paintings and how do you get the water?

(well technically it's two questions! lol)

hi crystal
Search where are the terrain-paints in the download section...
There is no water ! Sims will jump from the diving board and exit with the ladder. The most important is te depth not too much to let the simm to jump and sufficient to enclose the area otherwise it "escape" and swim in the whole lot until it use the ladder to exit. for my previous pblem, the sims escaped usind the sideway.
I hope I help you

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! ok! i thought there was some kind of special water tool that you use to fill the lake! lol ,and i found the terrain paints now i'm gonna go make the lake! thank you patul!

Great tutorial, pity it wasnt around earlier so I wouldnt have to learn by trial n error thanks corvi. Just a few questions to make my life easier next time around, you have been using a 6 click below ground level to avoid sims swimming all over the place previous tutorials have stated 5, I am not argueing, and at the risk of sounding pedantic which I am not, if the terrain is not homogenous and therefore not in line with the level of the terrain as given are the 6 clicks meant to be below standard ground level or 6 clicks below that which the sims would actually walk on when they left the pool?

Thankyou KOs

The height of 6 click is for the edge of the area, the sim will swim (in place of walk) until it use the ladder (to avoid swimming on the ground in the whole lot -see pics whith th pblem i had). It may be an interesting bug to make "dolphsims" lots. It is the same for sloped swimmingpools, the sim can swim up or down.

well patul we can look forward to finding out together since I am trying that very same thing thanks

thank you soooooo much for this tutorial corvidophile2. really clear and easy to follow. and yes it works for me! my sims are happily swimming around in the water and NOT inside the house. some of the other methods of making swimmable lakes use the boolProp cheat which is all well and good (although i find it a bit scary to use for some reason lol), but with yours alls i needed was moveobjects! huzzah! thanks again, you really saved me from using up a lot of time and frustration.

corvidophile2, here is what I came up with and I hope that you approve?

(I'm just using blue carpet for these quick tests.)
And I kind of "borrowed" that lower-foundation idea from JustTheBast.
His brilliant idea is next, as soon as I can "separate" his underwater house from the simple water that I really want, you know.

Thank you!
(Shame your pictures went poof.)

***
But later, around 2am when visiting sims wanted to leave, it was not pretty, corvidophile2? (Some even wanted to die or "drown"?)
***

... Jim ...