Hidden Shortcuts to Make Level Design Easier

Hidden Shortcuts to Make Level Design Easier

In the last article, I looked at what Filebase is and how to use it. Today, I’m going to go over some hidden shortcuts to make level design easier!

Unity has some useful keyboard and mouse combinations that make setting up levels easier from a design perspective. Some of these tools include snapping to a predefined grid value for moving and resizing objects, controlling the rotation angle in predefined increments while rotating objects, scaling objects with predefined grid values, duplicating objects, and snapping one object to align with another based on matching vertices between the two objects.

Ctrl + drag

The keyboard shortcut that is shared between the functions above that are all constrained by predefined increments is ctrl + drag the mouse. This shortcut limits the dimensions of what ever tool you have selected (Move, rotation, scale, etc.) to predefined increments. For rotation, for instance, it limits the movement to 15 degree increments allowing you to be more precise.

Ctrl + D

Ctrl + D will duplicate what ever object you have selected in the hierarchy. This is very useful when creating objects that repeat like walls.

Ctrl + V

Holding Ctrl + V will start to show you different vertices of the object you have highlighted and allow you to click to select a vertex and snap it to another vertex from another object. this is most useful when aligning two objects in a scene.

Using these shortcuts dramatically increases the speed and accuracy with which you can create complex scenes.

Next Time!

In this article, I went over some hidden shortcuts to make level design easier. Next time, I’ll be looking at creating a sci-fi lab room! If you enjoyed this article, or want to come along with me as I progress on my journey, follow me at gamedevchris.medium.com.