Rotating Items and Building Tips

This guide is trying to be the most comprehensive possible about rotating and angling items in your condo.
We will go through various building technics and see how to angle items properly.

From various approaches to preventing angling annoyances, you will (hopefully) learn something useful for your future creations !

Introduction

Welcome in this Tower Unite guide, where you will find numerous informations about angling.

This guide is subject to change (mainly updated) if I find anything interesting to talk about

Decorating your condo is one of the main activity in the game. People love decorating, or building houses in their condo.
But one thing that many players are struggling with while practicing those activities is angling things right.

While decorating doesn't (most of the time) require you to be precise in your items placement, building is a domain where you need your structure to be as correct as possible, in order to be the most coherent and believable to others.

For the sake of being the most convincing through your creations, you need to master the most important feature of the building system in Tower Unite : ANGLING

Basics

First thing to know, is that rotating an item is quantified.


The minimum angle you will get by scrolling your mousewheel by one increment is shown on the picture, here between two canvases.




In total, you can pivot an item 24 times to make a 360° rotation.










After placing an item down, it will most of the time be unaligned.











Press R to make it right. Sometimes, pressing R doesn't make the item perfectly parallel to the ground, so you will have to use your mouse wheel to re-align it.

Building example I : House basics

Before to start showing you the wonders of rotation, I will tell you that I will NOT use the snapping grid to build any of the following examples in this section, and later parts.
Snapping has its own part in this guide, and will mainly be about the issues you encouter by using it for complex builds.
________________________________

What a better way to learn about angles than directly experimenting through building !


For our first easiest example, I am going to build a simple house using the construction panels.









I first place down two wooden panels perpendicular to each other.








The last wall, here the doorway, is aligned with the corners or the two walls perpendicular to it, meaning our walls are perfectly placed between each other.






Now, I'm going to build the roof.
I first place down a sandbox on the backwall of the house. The back of the sandbox is a very large area that will accompany us through most of our builds

While dragging the sandbox on the desired surface, I press R, reinitializing the sandbox rotation and keeping the X axis parallel to the ground (this is absolutely necessary to prevent any angling issue from happening ; cf "Angling Issues" part)

I place down one panel on the sandbox, aligning his most upper corner with the middle of the backwall (again, no snapping...[especially not on walls] and also, press R. Press R every single time you put down a building prop). I place the other panel to complete the roof.






Now, I want to fill this triangle area.









I place down a smaller panel that isn't larger than a ceiling slope. I place it on the border of the ceiling, aligning its corner with the wall/ceiling crossing location.






Same with the other side.









And finally, I put a panel quarter to fill that little square hole...









... and we're done for that side!










For the other side, do almost the same, but because of the doorway, you will want to use half panels.







Place a quarter panel in the square hole and also on the little triangle that remains.








And that's it for one of the easiest building example you can make in the game.

Canvas

Aswell as in the panel building examples, I will NOT use the snapping grid to build.

I will also keep pressing R (and reajust the X axis if needed), as usual, while dragging items, to reinitialize their angle.











You will need these two items to start it off.











On the wooden panel, I place down a canvas, press R and reajust the X axis.









I scale the canvas to the maximum size and make it so its base is slightly touching the ground. I then remove the panel, it won't be of any use from now.









See the canvas border ?









Place the sandbox on it, press R.









I place a canvas on the sandbox, press R, max its size.









I put the sandbox over the canvas I just placed, then redrag that same canvas on the sandbox to flip it over.









Align the canvas with the first one.









Do the same for the other side.









For the doorway, start doing the same thing as the previous steps.








Place down a door trying to figure out the middle.









Then fill the sides with canvases with a reduced width (in this case, at the minimum width).









On the top of a wall, place down a sandbox.









Under it, put a canvas. You will come across this issue, where it is clipping through the sandbox, orientated the wrong way. This is a glicth happening for whatever reason.









To resolve that, you will have to drag around your item on another surface.
Now, to not spoil your item angle, you GOTTA drag your item away on a PERPENDICULAR surface that is CONNECTED to the surface where it glicthes. Press R on that surface.









And there you go.










Max out the canvas size, put the sandbox on that canvas, remove the canvas, and put down two canvas wedges as shown here.










Just make sure each wedge is clipping their respective canvas border at this amount.









And place down the roof just that easy.









To fill that hole, put a sandbox at the back of one of the canvas next to the door, and place a canvas on it as shown, with a width of 0 and a height of 0.6.








Simply fill the rest with two other canvases.











And that is going to be enough for our first canvas build.

Building example II : Half-pipe Roof

Our second building example will be a half pipe roof.

There will be parts where I use the copycat tool to make things easier.

Using construction panels :

This is where we want our roof to be.









First, place a sandbox on one of the wall edge ...









... and copycat it to make a very large work surface.
To begin our roof, we will first want to have a pre-visualisation of what it will look like.









What is really helpful is that the width of the Half Panel (left) is the same length of the height of the Half Wall (right).










So, using the Half Panel, I try to make a model of my roof. I tried to rotate each piece so it gives me a good enough looking arch.









To concretely build my arch, I use a panel that will help me place the actual roof pieces. Here, I am using a Full Wall, that I rotate to the same angle of my pre-model. I place down my first roof piece to the aligned edge of the Full Wall.









To prevent any of these ugly openings, do as the following :










Place your helper panel so it crosses the UPPER EXTERIOR corner of your previous piece.










You will have to noclip into the ledge that is passing through the helper panel, and drag down your next roof piece on the cossing part, as shown here. (the little cluster of red, green, blue and white is just the three directional arrows)









Now, of course your piece won't be aligned at all.










That is why you will use a sandbox, placed on top of your piece to align it.










Good 'nuff.











Do the same on the other side, and continue your work until you reach the top of your roof. For the last bit of space, I will use a smaller piece that I simply put against the sandbox wall.










Now that the first section of your roof is completed, it's time for the easier part.
Copycat time!
Use your copycat tool to copycat tool and right-click on a piece. Press E and R to be able to paste it at the same angle rotation.
Aim as shown, on the base of the piece. (It is recommended to press A to zoom and be more precise in your placement)









Once you copied/pasted each pieces and completed each row... well... you're done.

Using regular canvases

The principle is the same as the construction panels. It's even easier with the placing.
Take your helper panel again, and use it to place down your roof pieces.









You should have no problem having your first section done. (Surely you will have to play around with the Y scale axis to have yourself a nice looking arch)









To build the next sections, simply put a sandbox on the back of a canvas, and copy/paste it next to itself.










From there, you can easily finish it off.

Using canvas cubes

Well, I don't think I have to really go in depth in here. The placement is just the easiest of all.
Scale your Y axis as you wish and place your canvas cube on the sandbox.
Place down the next piece aligned with the upper exterior corner of the previous piece ...








... repeat for the other side and you should get a nice looking arch.

Building example III : Hip Roof

This is going to be the most difficult part to follow.


For those who are unknown with roof architecture, that is a hip roof. Building a hip roof contains good examples of angling.









Let's build a roof over this patch of black canvases.










I first place wedge 1 (the helper), with a desired Z scale height (that will be our roof angle. I chose 0.5 for this example).

Here, I put down a panel to help me place wedge 2, but I realized I could just place wedge 2 directly on wedge 1 side. It's way better.

Anyway, I make sure wedge 2 matches with the corner of the black canvas.







I aligned this panel with the wedge tip.

Again, I could have used Wedge 1 to be aligned with this canvas wedge tip, but whatever.









I place down another wedge, aligning their tip together.









I should get that result.










Within their settings, I try to make their edges aligned while they have the same Z scale. (for here it will be 0.85)









There you go ! Now I gotta use wedge 1 to move them a bit to the left so the black canvases are covered correctly.












I do the same for the other side.










Let's make both side join together.

Place down a cube so its side is aligned with the center of the gap you want to fill.
Place a panel on it.









You will have to play around a little bit and guess manually where to put your panel so the wedge you will place will be correctly placed.








Good.










Simply put a wedge on the cube, align it and you're good with that side.










Same on the other side.










Not perfect, but eh... it's really tedious. No building I have ever build is perfectly perfect.









Now wedge helper, aligned as shown. (For some reason, the helper now needs to be at 0.53 to be aligned with the slope... weird. I don't know if it's normal or not. But it's not important.)










Place a wedge on its side, aligned with the black canvas corner.








with the helper, easily put the other wedge corners.









And make them join, like on the other side.









And you'll just have to fill the hole with smaller wedges (still Z scaled at 0.53).









With the cube method shown in the slopes section of this guide, finish off the roof slope parts you need to fill.

Building example IV : Slopes

We want to have a slope between the start of the canvas wedge slope, and the upper left full wall edge. I separated them at a random distance.










First, make sure they are both pretty much aligned (doesn't have to be perfect)









Go to your settings, and set the FOV at 50.











Go far away from the scene ...










... and press A to zoom.

Doing this will prevent any perspective distortion, so the angle measurment we are going to do is going to be quite precise.

You will have to measure the angle, using whatever tool you have in mind (protractor or tool in a software with a screenshot... )

I have used a protractor and saw the angle between the start of the canvas wedge slope, and the upper left full wall edge was at 16 degrees.

Now, with your FOV still at 50, you will want to come the closest possible to the start of your canvas wedge slope (again, to prevent any perspective distortion).

Like before, you will measure the canvas wedge angle while modifying its height (Scale Z).
For me, it's a Z scale of 0.2




And here you have a very well angled slope that is pointing toward the top of our wall !











To continue the slope, put down a canvas cube, with the same scale and height than the wedge.










Put on top of the cube another wedge, with the same dimension than the first one, and align it manually.










Move your cube, put another cube ontop of it, and put another wedge. It's that easy !










For the last bit, do just the same, but scale your wedge down (using Scale All) until it fills the gap.










Copy/paste the last wedge, align it ...










... and voilà ! :-)

Snapping and its limit

Snapping sounds like the most useful thing in the world when you want to build precisely.
Well, it sure is really helpful, but not for everything.

Floors

It's perfect for floors
Never since my first build with snapping integrated in this game have I encountered an issue while building floors.
For an orientated floor, simply reduce your snap to 2 (make sure all of your canvases are orientated the SAME WAY )

Walls

If you are building a wall using cubes or panels with their orientation reinitialized (pressing R), then you should have no problem at all.









But if you wanna rotate a wall 45 degrees, for instance,
it becomes wobblier.











This is because the snapping grid doesn't rotate with your item.
If you rotate an item, it will be nearly impossible to get a good looking result while snapping.
You can only have a decent result if you press R, to align your item with the grid. (or every 90 degrees)

A rotation issue

Let's build a wall of regular canvases !

I do a random setup for my wall with a wedge at a random height to set the angle of my wall.











I want a beautiful perfectly straight wall like shown in red.









I place down a canvas, press R to reinitialize its ang... ... uh ... OH NOES !! Its angle is still messed up!
*presses R again and again*. It's still messed up!
Nooo! How am I going to get this canvas parallel to the ground ?...











Well I found out if you drag around your item on a lots of polygon (here a sphere) and put it back on your desired surface, it might help you just a little bit.









This is the best result I can get.

This is the most common issue you will encounter if you build a lot of things. Items will start to refuse to be aligned. That's because the item on which you have put your canvas on is not aligned with the rotation quantification system.

Let me show you :

In here, the wedge slope is angled at 45 degrees (Z scale at 0) , which is equal to three rotation incrementations (shown by the full wall panel here).

As you can see, the canvas is perfectly aligned.







Here, the wedge is angled at 15 degrees ( Z scale at ~ 0.186 [yes you can manually input more than two digits after ".", and the game will take care of it, though it will only show two digits in the counter afterward] ) which is equal to 1 rotation incrementation, and again, the canvas is very well aligned.







Here I've put a random number, the panel doesn't match the wedge angle, and the canvas is messed up and nothing can make it right.





This is the biggest issue I can think of right now.

I may update this section if I encounter another big problem like that.

Quick angling tip

You don't wanna be limited to 24 rotation incrementations and have a wider range of angles ?

Try using other items as support. For instance, this lamp base. You can put canvases directly on its edge, or a sandbox !










Because the lamp doesn't have 24 sides on its base, rotating it will cause a little shift of the angle.









Here I have used a mug for one of my project.









But you can also use wedges and change their Z scale manually to be the most precise possible !











That will be all for this guide.

I hope building stuff is more approachable for you and less scary.
There are many way to build one thing. The way I have built the examples shown in this guide are just one way to do it.
Let's see how you're going to build your own creations !

Have a brightful day !

[Peka]

Is there a feature where you can flip the item horizontally/vertically WITHOUT using the rotation tool?

[Freemann]

bless

[Ratsmacker69]

I don't speak white flag.

[Belgo]

bouh tu pues


jk merci mec

[luca]

very helpful guide!