Place Assets

This activity is included in an 8-part, 1 hour series to learn Game Maker. Short, focused topics with guided practice will give you practical experience building useful logic for creating games.

Begin Game Maker 3

Place & Position Assets (Objects)

🟢 EASY

In this activity, you will practice placing and positioning assets in Game Maker to add 3D interactive objects to a scene. You will also learn about the relationships that can be created between objects using the Hierarchy.

Start

Launch Game Maker

• Open or create an Experience.

Library

Find Assets

Open the Library (press L) and add assets to your quick access bar:

• Add two assets to your quick access bar from the Props and Characters tabs

Place & Remove

Place and Remove Objects

An object is an instance of an asset placed in an Experience. You can place as many objects as you want using an asset. Objects snap to block surfaces when placed.

• With an asset selected in the quick access bar, LEFT CLICK inside the viewport to place it

• Press SHIFT to snap to the grid when placing an asset

• To remove an object:
• In Select mode, LEFT CLICK to select an object and duplicate it with CTRL+D

Multi-Select

• Practice selecting multiple objects and try duplicating and deleting a group:

  • Drag the mouse to draw a rectangle (this selects all objects behind the rectangle to the edge of the Experience)

  • Press SHIFT and click one item at a time to add to your selection

  • Press CTRL to add and remove an object from your selection

Grid

View and Snap to the Grid

The grid system and snap tools allow for custom block and asset placement for any project.

• Open Grid settings to hide or show the grid, adjust scale, and set opacity. Let's leave the grid on

• Place an object with the grid's OSNAP toggle on, and notice that you can turn on and off the X, Y, or Z axes

• Snap an object to the ground with a click

Movement

Move Objects

• • Click and drag a coloured arrow to move the object on one axis

  • Move the mouse pointer between two arrows to activate a plane to move only between those two axes

  • Move to the center where the arrows meet to activate a cube to move freely between all three axes

  • In the Properties panel, modify position coordinates to move the asset with precision

Test Movement with a Custom Grid

Rotation

Rotate Objects

• Press O to Turn off OSNAP

• • Click and drag a coloured curve to rotate the object on one axis

  • Hover over the gizmo to activate a sphere to rotate freely between all three axes

  • In the Properties panel, modify rotation coordinates to rotate the asset with precision

Test Rotation with a Custom Grid

Hierarchy

Test the Hierarchy to Control Objects

• Click an object in the Viewport and notice it is highlighted in the Hierarchy

• In the Hierarchy, drag and drop that object onto another object to make it a child

• Select the parent object and test movement and rotation to see how it controls the child object's position and rotation

Follow Up

Practice: Use what you've learned to build a small scene of objects. It takes time to get used to the controls with the mouse and keyboard shortcuts, but the tools are very flexible to build any project.

The next activity will introduce behaviours to drive an object's actions and tags to customize how objects can detect and respond to each other.

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➕ Relevant Resources

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Forum: Community Ideas & Support

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Other "Begin Game Maker" Videos

Play/Test
Build with Blocks
Place Assets
Set Object Actions
Trigger Logic
Craft Quests
Set Up Mechanics
Build Multiplayer Games