[RELEASED] Object Placement Tool

Community Showcases
1

Hi everyone!
I’m happy to introduce you my new asset! This time it’s an editor extension, which has been designed to accelerate a level design.
The first idea of Object Placement Tool (abbreviated OPT) was to create a helper tool that will allow to populate my own scenes with many number of objects using just mouse click.

Simple placement with random rotation by mouse click.

Place objects by bunches in Brush Mode.

After few months of battle tests in my own scenes I decided to improve that tool by adding a Physics Mode, because I have so many objects that I have to drop on its side in my scene, for example: a table or an office chair that has irregular shape, and it’s pretty tricky to rotate it > move to the floor > rotate again, looking for a perfect angle, so the model parts don’t go through the floor.

Overturn an object with a non-rectangular shape onto its side without a tedious manual adjustment.

Creating a heap of different objects in seconds.

With OPT you can forget about this headache, because it allows you to use physics for this kind of tasks.

This toolkit has been created for my own needs first, so it’s tested in real scenes, not just on primitives.
Object Placement Tool is now available for everyone, who wants to increase the speed of creating and assembling game levels in Unity.

Features:

• Place objects on any surface by mouse click (or place only on selected object/layer);
• Physics Mode to drop objects onto each other and create big heaps of stuff;
• Randomize rotation and scale for created objects;
• Align to Surface feature to align created object’s up axis to the surface normal direction;
• Follow Path feature, place new object depending to previous object direction. Good for fence placing;
• Brush Mode to create objects by bunches;
• Group objects in the hierarchy or even combine meshes into a single mesh (works for meshes, that shares one material);

• Open source.

Please, watch the full video demo to see all in action▼
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQhxHJeCF4w

Asset Store page: __Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

4 Likes
2

Awesome tool, great idea to use the physics engine to position models realistically!

3

Thanks!

4

Great results, would’ve taken ages to line them up individually! Much fun to play around with it! :smile:

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1 Like
5

Thanks! Awesome looking shot!

6

Can this tool used to paint textures an things like grass, tree, etc to replace the standard unity tree tool?

7

Hi!
You can place grass and trees with that tool. But there are no “erase” feature like in standard Unity’s terrain tools.
Anyway, I used this tool in my latest project to place custom grass meshes on the terrain and it works just fine for me.
Thanks!

8

Hi NOT_Lonely,
I bought your tool yesterday and I found when you place objects with the physic mode, using Unity 2018.3.0f2 and HDRP, the arrow appear in Pink. I guess the Shader isn’t compatible with HDRP.

Another issue is every time I place an object (Ctrl + Mouse RB) the arrow get re centered. like the x,z position get reset or something.

btw, there is anyway to hide the hotkey display debug from the Game scene? Ones you get used to use the tools you don’t need it.

Thanks

9

in 2018 LTS i get an error on import
Assets\NOT_Lonely\Object Placement Tool\Editor\NL_ObjectPlacementTool_window.cs(363,19): error CS0117: ‘SceneView’ does not contain a definition for ‘duringSceneGui’

Assets\NOT_Lonely\Object Placement Tool\Editor\NL_ObjectPlacementTool_window.cs(379,19): error CS0117: ‘SceneView’ does not contain a definition for ‘duringSceneGui’

10

Hi,
It looks like you imported wrong version.

11

two version on asset store ? i just imported the one i own, no option to select anything… please be more specific

12

Open the Asset Store inside Unity editor, go to your assets, find the tool and click download/update. Once it download, press Import.

13

im using latest version, its 1.1 october 2019 release. it import with error in 2018 LTS version

14

Did you tried what I suggested?
It’s still looks like you importing a wrong version. There are two version on the store: one for Unity 5.6 - Unity 2018 inclusive, and another one for Unity 2019+. So it looks like you’re trying to import this 2019+ into your 2018.

15

that what i’m trying to say. I only see 1 version on the asset store. There are no “download” option but only “import” since it is already downloaded. So can you provide a direct link or package both together in a package. i Feel stupid but i don’t get it.

by the way the asset is really cool I’ve already used it successfully in the past.

16

Try to remove it from your downloads: if you use Windows, go to C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Unity\Asset Store-5.x\NOTLonely\Editor ExtensionsPainting\ and delete package.

Then try to download it again from the Unity version you want to use it with.

1 Like
17

I have just found this and think is really interesting and useful. I have seen the videos and looks great and seems to be much timesaving and with some features like random rotation and random scale. And very good that with this you could make piles of different objects

I have seen some objects piles like these ones shown here https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/lz1/junkyard-tires-wheel-piles but did not know how to do it, and I think this is already possible with this tool as shown on the last video.

As far as I see it looks like for it to work it depends always on you using the mouse button to release objects, or is not true?, I have seen that there is a crosshair for where to position the spawning point.

SUGGESTION TO MAKE AN AUTOMATIC SPAWN

Well, I have one possible suggestion, it would be really awesome that using the same way you could position a starting point and then have multiple objects spawned automatically without you having to make them manually, and that you could configure the amount of objects and speed of spawn flow so it would continue doing it without using the mouse until you tell to stop

I mean is like for example when you open a tap to let the water flow, and it flows automatically, and then when you do not need anymore water, you turn the tap to stop the water flow

Example of emitter from Cinema 4D

When I say that it should be automatically, is like an emitter, I mean something like this that can be found in the Cinema 4D software as seen at the start of this video

Or if you would like to fill a big pool with different objects, you would need to spawn a lot of objects so this is why I tell to do it automatically, and then wait until the pool is filled with objects.

And instead of selecting just one point of spawning, you could move the spawning point wherever you want.

SUGGESTION TO FILL A SPACE OR BASIC PLANE FLOOR WITH OBJECTS

I also have thought that maybe you could want to fill a whole space, room, or floor totally with objects in an automatic way, so it could start spawning in the top of the select object plane, and then go until the bottom of it feeling all the area with a continuous flow of gameobjects or prefabs.

It can be limited to work only with square, rectangular and circular areas so I think it would be easier to manage

For example like a concrete filling machine as shown here

An example could using your books collection https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/props/interior/pbr-books-set-111474 that as shown on your promo images, they are on the floor, so you could fill the floor with thousands of books in a random rotation way and using physics.

If you need more information I can explain more about it

Thanks very much and wish you all the best