Building Lesson 002: Modelling and Unioning

Greetings builders. I am Domswolf ready to give you more info about Roblox Studio. Last time, we learned how to scale, move, drag, and do other basic editing to objects. Today we will be looking at the next heading in the Studio. The heading next to “Home” labeled “Model”. We will also be briefly looking at Unioned and Negative Parts

The Model tools are many repeated tools from Home. Here you can still find tools like “Scale” and “Rotate”, but here we have many new tools as well. If you start from the left you will see the four main tools we used last time, but next to it, we find a button called Lock. Lock can be a really helpful tool when you’re dealing with selecting objects. When you first open a project, your baseplate will be locked, meaning you cannot select it or edit it.

Let’s say for example you have a creation that you want to group into a model. If the baseplate was not locked, when you dragged your mouse across it, you would drag the baseplate instead of being able to select your multiple objects. You can also select multiple objects by holding down shift when you select anything. Anyway, if the baseplate is locked, you can touch is without moving or selecting it, as seen in the picture below.

You can also press a button (inside Lock) called Unlock all, this will unlock everything in your game so you can edit. If you are using the lock tool and are trying to figure out what you have locked, your cursor will be in the shape of a lock when you go up to a brick. The arrow next to the brick shows whether or not the brick will be locked or unlocked.

The next button under lock is called Collisions. I personally only find this helpful when designing basic vehicles but all developers have different opinions. Collsions will toggle whether or not you can make blocks go inside other blocks (or wedges, unions, etc.). If it is highlighted, you will not be able to put anything inside anything, which can be helpful when building basic vehicles because vehicles cannot be anchored and therefore would collapse on themselves if they were stuck together. I will cover that in another lesson.

You may also notice the buttons "Advanced Objects" and "Effects". We will get to those in the next episode or later for your convenience.

SOLID MODELING

Welcome to the second portion of todays lesson, which is all about Unions. Before we begin, I would first like to say two things. 1. Unions can be a little challenging for beginners like you so I advise that you either come back to this lesson later when you feel you are ready or read this lesson carefully and practice. Practice Makes Perfect. 2. Unions are very new to Roblox Studio and are still being experimented with. When unions first came out, there were no physics with the unions, meaning that it was hard to actually walk on them. Now things have changed and unions are helpful for other things rather than decoration.

Unions are blocks that have been edited, morphed, and sliced to create objects that cannot just be “inserted” into your game like a wedge or brick. Unions can create shapes that normally cannot be created with just wedges, blocks, and cylinders. I have put an example of one of my unions in this picture.

That union was made with 1 brick, and using 30+ negative parts. Negative parts are bricks that have become negative by selecting it and pressing “Negate” on your toolbar. This makes the block red. now that you have a regular part and a negative part. Put the two together so they are colliding. If one of going into the other, select both of them and then click union. Now you will notice that the negative brick has carved its shape into the brick. Now you have a union.

I don’t expect you to be using 30+ parts on a union just yet, but let me explain a few cons of unions. For starters, try clicking the scale tool and select your union and scale it. You will notice that it does not scale parts individually. It scales it down or “resizes” it on all three axis. If you want to edit a brick you have to click separate and then scale it to your liking. Negative parts have the same behavior, you would have to separate, edit, then re-negate it to fit your liking. However, the resize tool can still be helpful, at least to me for if I make something too big or too small.

Well there you have it, your introduction to Unions, if you didn’t fully understand, try practicing in Studio or come back later. Even I didn’t do well with unions to start with, but it’s like I always say: When you are building, always tell yourself you can do better, that is what makes you grow.

You are almost ready to build your first creation. Tune in next lesson as we discuss the “Properties” of objects and how to edit them. We will also talk about lights briefly. Bye now and have fun building.