Level Editor/Tools/Box

Box
Where	Toolbar, shape tools
Shortcut	Esc or Right mouse cancels
Works on	A new box brush
Settings	Tool Properties

The Box tool draws box-shaped brushes: floors, walls, blocks, platforms. It is the tool you will use most for blocking out a map. Boxes can then be cut, carved, extruded and reshaped with the other tools (see Brushes and CSG).

Drawing a box in the 3D view

1. Pick Box on the toolbar.
2. Press on a surface (or empty space) and drag out the footprint. It snaps to the grid, to smart guides and to the corners and edges you can see.
3. Let go, then move the mouse up or down to set the height.
4. Click to finish the box.

Esc or Right mouse cancels the box you are drawing.

Start on an unselected brush and the box stands on its face. On a slanted or turned face, the box is built square to that face and on its own grid (hold Alt as you start to use the world grid instead). See Smart grid on faces.

If you look straight down at the floor while drawing the footprint, there is no height step: the box is made at once, Default Brush Height tall (or as tall as the selected brush, with Match Active Brush).

Pushing and pulling a face: hold Ctrl and drag on a face of an existing brush to move that face in and out along its normal, making the brush longer or shorter.

Alt+Q selects the brush under the mouse without leaving the tool.

Drawing a box in a 2D view

In the Top, Front or Side view, drag a rectangle and the box is made at once. Its depth (the size you cannot see in that view) comes from:

• What you start on. Start over something the view shows and the box stands on it, as one drawn there in the 3D view would: from the surface under where you pressed, Default Brush Height towards you. A box drawn in the Top view over a block sits on the block's top; one drawn in the Front view over a wall sticks out of the wall. A cut view starts it on what the cut shows.
• Over empty space: the depth of the selected brush (a wall drawn in the Top view is as tall as the selected floor is thick), unless Match Active Brush is off; else the depth of the last box you made; else Default Brush Elevation, Default Brush Height deep.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	What it does
Collision Type	List	STATIC	What kind of collision the brush gets in the game. STATIC is a solid, still brush: use it for almost everything. NONE has no collision. KINEMATIC and RIGID export it as other kinds of physics body and are rarely wanted.
Collision Layers	Number	1	Which collision layers the brush is on. Leave at 1 unless you know you need otherwise.
Collision Mask	Number	1	Which layers the brush collides with. Leave at 1.
Alignment	List	Align to surface	Align to surface builds on the face you start on. XY Plane, XZ Plane and YZ Plane always draw the footprint on that world plane.
Match Active Brush	Check box	On	When drawing in empty space, copy elevation and height from the selected brush.
Correct UVs on Extrude	Check box	On	When you drag a face to extrude it, the side walls' textures are laid fresh from their world position, so they do not stretch.
Default Brush Elevation	Meters	0	Orthogonal Viewport. Where along a 2D view's depth a box drawn over empty space starts, when neither the selection nor the last box gives a depth.
Default Brush Height	Meters	1	Orthogonal Viewport. How deep a box drawn in a 2D view is when it starts over a brush. Also the height of a box whose base you draw looking straight at the floor.

New brushes wear the material selected in the Materials tab.

Tips

• Keep the grid coarse (1 m or 0.5 m) while blocking out, and go finer only for detail. [ and ] change it.
• To make a room, draw a solid box the size of the room and use Tools > Hollow... (Ctrl+H).
• To make a slope, draw a box and, in the Front or Side view, clip it from one top corner down to the opposite bottom corner.

Related pages

• Brushes and CSG
• Brush properties
• Edit Face