Game guide:Fog emitter

Fog Emitter is a special object in The Sims 3 that can be used to create visual effects in the game, such as steam, waterfall, and so on. It was first introduced and only available in Ambitions, but as of patch 1.42, the fog emitter was made available for the base game. The fog emitter appears under buyDebug Buy mode category. To access, use  and   cheats. The object will be available under the miscellaneous debug section as a metallic blue sphere.

To use the fog emitter, ctrl+shift+left click on the object to bring up the options. There are options to set visual effect, disable visual effect, or add the ability to add triggers and activated behaviors as part of tomb-building interactions. Choosing the "set visual effect" interaction will bring up a text entry field. There is no list to choose from, so players are expected to know the codes for the effects they want to display. There are many effects available, some of which have not been documented. The list of fog emitter codes up to the release of Island Paradise is available for download in .txt format (credits to Simified.) There are no descriptions, as the names are all self-explanatory. For example, waterfall_1_short is a waterfall effect (it should be noted that there are many other waterfall effects.)

If the Store Premium Content Lady Ravendancer Goth's Book o' Spells is installed, store_spellbook_moons_stars is also a valid code.

There is a mod at ModTheSims by Buckley that enables the player to shift the fog emitter up and down, which allows more flexibility for creating effects.

Effect stay in place even when lots using the fog emitter are exported and shared--effects are not lost when other players use the shared lots.