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3. A small apartment

In this tutorial you build a three-room apartment: a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom, with doors between them. You will draw walls one by one instead of with the Room tool, so you can lay out any floor plan.

You will learn: the Wall tool, typed lengths, snapping, rooms that share walls, inside doors and portals, room settings, painting whole rooms and adding skirting and cornices.

Time: about 30 minutes.

The plan

Section titled “The plan”
 ┌───────────────┬─────────┐
 │               │         │
 │  Living room  │ Bedroom │  4 m
 │    6 x 4 m    │  4 x 4  │
 │               │         │
 └──────┬────────┴─────────┘
        │ Bath  │
        │ 3 x 2 │  2 m
        └───────┘

1. Draw the outline of the living room and bedroom

Section titled “1. Draw the outline of the living room and bedroom”
  1. Start a new project named small_apartment (File > New project…, as in tutorial 1).
  2. Press C for the Wall tool.
  3. Click once on a grid point to start. Move the pointer to the right; the wall follows, snapping to the grid and to straight angles.
  4. Type 10 and press Enter. A 10 m wall is placed along the direction you were pointing, and the next wall starts at its end.
  5. Point down, type 4, Enter. Point left, type 10, Enter.
  6. Click on the very first point to close the loop. A square marker labelled Endpoint of the first wall shows when you are on it. Right-click or Esc then stops the chain.
A typed length: the readout shows the number you type, and Enter places the wall along the direction you point.

A closed loop of walls is a room: a 10 x 4 m room appears with a floor and a ceiling.

2. Split it into two rooms

Section titled “2. Split it into two rooms”
  1. With the Wall tool still active, hover the top wall 6 m from the left corner. Over a wall the point goes onto it in grid steps (the Edge snap, labelled On and the wall’s name); the label beside the pointer always says which snap is active.
  2. Click to start a wall there, point straight down and click on the bottom wall: the point straight below snaps to Perpendicular.
  3. Press Esc.
Over a wall the point snaps onto it in grid steps; the label names the snap and the wall.

You now have two rooms, 6 x 4 m and 4 x 4 m. The top and bottom walls stay one wall each: walls that run on in a straight line are one wall, the new wall makes a T against them, and each face of a long wall is painted span by span.

3. Add the bathroom

Section titled “3. Add the bathroom”
  1. Start a wall on the bottom wall, 2 m from the left corner.
  2. Point down, type 2, Enter. Point right, type 3, Enter. Point up and click on the bottom wall.
  3. Esc. A third room appears.
The plan after step 3, seen from the top view (7).

4. Doors between rooms

Section titled “4. Doors between rooms”
  1. Press I for the Door tool. In the tool options set Width to 0.90 and Height to 2.10, a usual size for an inside door.
  2. Click the wall between the living room and the bedroom.
  3. Click the wall between the living room and the bathroom, in the middle of the bathroom’s side (about 3.5 m from the left corner). That stretch is part of the long bottom wall, whose own middle (5 m) is at the bathroom’s corner: keep the door away from it.
  4. For the front door set the size back to 1.30 x 2.30 and click an outer wall of the living room. Add a couple of windows (N) on the outer walls.
An inside door: set the size in the tool options before you click.

A door you have placed changes size with Standard size in its Properties (0.90 x 2.10, 1.00 x 2.30 or 1.30 x 2.30 m).

An opening between two rooms becomes a portal: the game uses portals to decide which rooms to draw, so they matter for performance and for what you see through a doorway. They are made automatically.

The Game workspace showing portals as arrows and room bounds as yellow boxes
The Game workspace shows the interior as the game sees it: portals as arrows, room bounds as yellow boxes. The Portals tool (T) puts a game door in a portal, chooses its hinge side or edits its flags.

5. Name the rooms and set their heights

Section titled “5. Name the rooms and set their heights”
  1. Press V (Select) and click inside the living room’s floor. Its Properties appear.
  2. Press F2 and rename it, for example living (or type the name in the Name row at the top of its Properties and press Enter). Room names show in the view and in the Scene list.
  3. Try Ceiling height: walls without a height of their own follow it.
  4. Name the others bedroom and bath.

Each room has its own Game properties section too: the Timecycle (the lighting mood the game applies inside it), the Room flags and, under Sound, the Portal occlusion (how much sound its open doorways stop; automatic by default). The defaults are fine to start with.

A room's Properties: its name, floor and ceiling materials, heights, and the Game properties section.

6. Paint whole rooms

Section titled “6. Paint whole rooms”
  1. Press B for the Paint tool and choose a wall material with the material button in the strip over the view (import the default set from Assets > + Add > Import default materials if you have not).
  2. Shift+click a wall inside the living room: every wall face looking into that room is painted.
  3. Choose Tiles and Shift+click a wall inside the bathroom.
  4. Click the bathroom floor with Tiles, the other floors with Wood planks.
  5. Shift+click on a floor paints that room’s ceiling.

A plain click on a wall paints only the span under the pointer, and Ctrl+click paints the whole face. Hover the ? at the end of the tool options for every modifier.

The Paint tool: the material is in the strip over the view, and hovering the ? lists what Shift, Ctrl and Alt do.

7. Skirting and cornices

Section titled “7. Skirting and cornices”
  1. Select the living room (Select tool, click its floor).
  2. In Properties, open the Trims section and click the Skirting row: a grid of cards with a picture of each style opens. Click a style. Do the same with the Cornice row.
  3. Do the same for the bedroom. Leave the bathroom without skirting, or give it a different style.
Click a trim row for its grid of styles; a card applies it to the room, or drag it onto a room in the view.

Trims follow the walls round corners and stop at the doorways; Through openings in the same section turns the skirting and dado rail round the jambs of an opening without an architrave and along its reveal. Doors and windows get an Architrave in their own Properties (the Architrave section).

8. Furnish and export

Section titled “8. Furnish and export”

Add a light per room (L), and props from the Game library: a bed, a sofa, a sink. Then check Problems and export with Ctrl+E.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”