Object Placement and Modification

 

Overview

 

This section will cover the basics of placing an object down in the editor, select and deselect it and move it around, as well as various other modifications you can perform on an object. 

It will also cover some other useful functions of the editor, to help arrange and manipulate your objects. 

Placing a brush

 

Selecting move mode and follow terrain 

Firstly, you need to do a little setup to do with how the object is placed into the level. 

Select Move mode so you’re able to move the object. You can do this by clicking the button shown below. You should also select the “follow terrain” button, so the object will slide along the terrain when you drag it out. 

Alternatively, Move Mode can be found in Edit > Editing mode > Move, and Follow Terrain can be found in Edit > Constrain > Constrain to Terrain/Geometry 

Creating a brush

To start, we’re going to place a very simple object down, called a brush. To do this, open up the objects tab of your rollup bar and select the “brush” button. 

Selecting your brush geometry

Next, you need to select the geometry of the object you want to place. Lets use a rock. Double click on the natural folder as below. 

A single click on the subsequent folders, Rocks and then Vulkan_Rocks, will lead you to a point something like this. 

Dragging a brush into the main view

 

Move your mouse on to the name of brush you want in the brush browser, click and hold the left mouse button on the brush, drag the mouse into the main editor view and release the mouse button. 

In this case, you want to drag out vulcan_rock_a 

And now, you should see something like this. 

If you don’t see something like this, don’t worry. Go back to the previous step about “move mode” and “follow terrain”, and make sure move mode is turned on. 

Then, follow the instructions below. 

If you accidentally lost your object or deselected it, press Ctrl-Z to undo your last action. 

Snapping an entity to the ground

 

When you are in “move mode” with an object selected, press Ctrl + Shift + Left mouse button to “snap” the pivot point of the entity to the ground where you click. 

Deselecting and Selecting Objects

 

So, now we have an object in view, lets deselect it and then select it again. There are 2 easy ways of deselecting objects – press Escape, or click anywhere else in the view screen (be careful not to click on another object though). Deselect your object now using one of these methods. 

To select an object, simply move your mouse over the object and press the left mouse button. 

Selecting multiple objects

 

To select multiple objects, click and hold the left mouse button in the perspective view, drag a box around the objects you want to select, then release when all the objects required are inside the selection box. 

Adding and Deselecting objects

 

Press Ctrl and click with the left mouse button to remove an object from your current selection. 

Also, the same procedure will add an object to your current selection. 

Modifying an object

The different object manipulation controls You can select different object control modes by clicking the appropriate icon, or pressing the 1 2 3 and 4 keys. 

Alternatively, select the individual modes using the edit menu in the menu bar at the top of the screen. 

Edit -> Editing mode -> Select Edit -> Editing mode -> Move Edit -> Editing mode -> Rotate Edit -> Editing mode -> Scale 

Select & Move tool

Make sure you’re in move mode. If you’re not, select it. 

Now, select your object, and you will see it has X, Y and Z selection bars, each corresponding to a different direction. The X bar is red, the Y bar is green and the Z bar is blue. The bar you previously had the mouse over will be yellow. 

If you move your mouse on to one of the bars, click and hold down the left mouse button, you can drag it back and forth in the direction it’s pointing, along that axis. 

You will notice between each bar, there is a square. Use this to drag along 2 different axis. 

Select & Rotate tool

 

As with move, you can rotate your object using its control bars. 

Edit -> Editing mode -> Rotate 

Select & Scale tool

The scale tool allows you to increase the size of an object, along its different axis’. 

Edit -> Editing mode -> Scale 

Clone

The first thing you need to know after making your first object, is how to make more of them! 

Simply select your object, press Ctrl-C, then move your mouse to where you want the copy of your object to be, then click the left mouse button. 

You can also copy an object by going into the menu bar at the top of the screen. 

Edit -> Clone (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) 

Undo and Redo

At the top left of the editor, you’ll notice two icons with arrows inside them. These are undo and redo. Pressing undo will take back your previous editor action, and after you undo is performed, redo will perform the action you just undid. 

Also accessed by: Edit Undo (Ctrl Z) Edit Redo 

Advanced object manipulation

Axis restraints

You will see the icons in the image below at the top of the editor frame. Each of the icons “restrains” the object, to only move in the direction you select, when you drag the object. Clicking a different axis of the object will change the restraint. 

Shown below, the yellow highlight is the direction the object is restrained in. For example, the XY restraint will restrain the object to only move horizontally. 

Also accessed by: Edit -> Constrain -> Constrain to X Axis Edit -> Constrain -> Constrain to Y Axis Edit -> Constrain -> Constrain to Z Axis Edit -> Constrain -> Constrain to XY Plane 

Snap to Terrain/Objects

 

The terrain snap and object/terrain snap make sure your objects move along the ground correctly. Terrain snap will only snap to the terrain itself. Object/Terrain snap will also move your objects along any other objects on the ground. 

Please note, this will not affect the rotation of your object at all, and it will snap the object to the floor at its axis point. 

Also accessed by: Edit -> Constrain -> Constrain to Terrain/Geometry 

Snap to grid

 

Click the button below once to turn snap to grid on. This will make sure any objects you move only move in distance “steps”. 

Also accessed by: Display -> Snap to Grid 

The small arrow directly next to the main movement snap button will bring up a drop down menu, which can be used to select the size of the grid to use to align against. Click Setup Grid. 

This is what you should see after clicking Setup grid. 

Snap Angle

 

As for grid snap, angle snap will cause your objects to snap and only rotate by the predefined set amount. 

Also accessed by: Display -> Snap Angle 

Go to object and align to object 

To use “go to selected object”, select the object you need, and click the button shown, and the perspective view window will center on the object you have selected. 

To use “align selection”, select an object, press the align selection button, then click the destination object. All transforms (position, rotation, scale) will be copied from destination object to your initial selected object. 

Also accessed by: Modify -> Goto Selection Modify -Y Align/Snap -> Align to Object 

Object lock and object positional controls At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see several other controls. 

Lock selection will make you unable to deselect the current object 

The object position controls allow you to move an object to an exact position in the level, using the type in dialog boxes. Also, fine tuning an object’s position can be done using the up and down arrows to the right of each dialog box. 

Also accessed by: Edit -> Lock Selection