Positioning GameObjects

When building your games, you'll place lots of different objects in your game world.

Focusing

It can be useful to focus the Scene View Camera on an object before manipulating it. Select any GameObject and press the F key. This will center the Scene View and pivot point on the selection. This is also known as Frame Selection.

Translate, Rotate, and Scale

Use the Transform Tools in the Toolbar to Translate, Rotate, and Scale individual GameObjects. Each has a corresponding Gizmo that appears around the selected GameObject in the Scene View. You can use the mouse and manipulate any Gizmo axis to alter the Transform Component of the GameObject, or you can type values directly into the number fields of the Transform Component in the Inspector. Each of the three transform modes can be selected with a hotkey - W for Translate, E for Rotate and R for Scale.

Gizmo Display Toggles

The Gizmo Display Toggles are used to define the location of any Transform Gizmo.


Gizmo Display Toggles

Unit Snapping

While dragging any Gizmo Axis using the Translate Tool, you can hold the Control key (Command on Mac) to snap to increments defined in the Snap Settings.

You can change the unit distance that is used for the unit snapping using the menu Edit->Snap Settings...


Scene View Unit Snapping settings.

Surface Snapping

While dragging in the center using the Translate Tool, you can hold Shift and Control (Command on Mac) to snap the object to the intersection of any Collider. This makes precise positioning of objects incredibly fast.

Look-At Rotation

While using the Rotate Tool, you can hold Shift and Control (Command on Mac) to rotate the object towards a point on the surface of any Collider. This makes orientation of objects relative to one another simple.

Vertex Snapping

You can assemble your worlds more easily with a feature called Vertex Snapping. This feature is a really simple but powerful tool in Unity. It lets you take any vertex from a given mesh and with your mouse place that vertex in the same position as any vertex from any other mesh you choose.

With this you can assemble your worlds really fast. For example, you can place roads in a racing game with high precision and add power up items on the vertices of a mesh.


Assembling roads with Vertex Snapping.

Using vertex snapping in Unity is simple. Just follow these steps:

Page last updated: 2013-02-05