Hidden Shortcut to Make Level Design Easier- Game Dev Series 146

S.J. Jason Liu
2 min readApr 9, 2022

Objective: introduce some tips to help you creating level more easier.

While creating 3D environment in Unity is quite easy and flexible, here are some tips that would help you modeling your world faster.

Grid snapping

When moving the 3D objects in Unity, press “W” key to switch to move tool. This would allow you to move the object in axis.
However, you can hold down “Ctrl” key (or “Command” key on Mac) and dragging the arrow of axis, this would snapping the object on grid with fixed unit.

Not just snapping for moving, you can rotate the objects with grid snapping.

Duplicate

If you want to copy an object multiple times, you can simply press “Ctrl + D” (“Command + D” on Mac) while selecting the object you want to duplicate(no matter selecting on game scene or in Hierarchy).

If you duplicate objects in game scene, you can directly moving the new object by default.

This would allow you quickly create a bunch of environment objects.

Vertex snapping

Here is another way to create a clean and ordered game scene align with grid.

While moving your object, hold down “V” key and select which vertex you would like to snap with others. Then drag it toward the target vertex, it would snap to it and make a perfect align.

Hold down “V” to see the vertex selected square.

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S.J. Jason Liu

A passionate gamer whose goal is to work in video game development.