How to Make an Office Building

Tutorial: How to Make an Office Building

This tutorial is classified as Basic.

I put this tutorial together to show people the fastest way to make a model in Roblox Studio. I'm going to make an office building in this tutorial, but really the technique I show here can be used to make any type of model.

The trick to building models very quickly in Roblox Studio is to exploit the symmetry in what you are trying to build in order to avoid placing every brick in your model manually. The idea is to build one repeatable element by hand, then copy and paste it many times to create a large structure. Enough talk. If you don't get it now you will soon.

Visit this Office Building on Roblox

Start with a Single Brick

File:Office1.png

Find a nice empty space to build and insert a single brick into your level (using the toolbox or maybe you have one lying around).

Create the Repeatable Element

File:Office2.png

Deciding what the repeatable element should look like is the trick. You have to imagine what the element will look like when it is copied and placed next to itself. In this tutorial, I have done the thinking for you, so make this L-shaped window pane. The exact size does not matter. Create the glass by clicking the brick, then going through the settings until you find "Transparency" Then change that to 0.4 or experiment to find the right one for you.

Select the Repeatable Element

File:Office3.png

Using the Arrow Tool to select the repeatable element. The best way to do this is to click with the arrow and drag a rectangle over all the parts. You should see them selected like in the picture.

Copy and Paste

File:Office4.png

This is where the magic happens. Copy the selected elements by pressing ctrl D. Then reposition them like in the picture (you can move a selected group of elements using either the Arrow Tool or the Axis Tool). If they become unselected, don't worry, just select them again.

Reselect, Recopy

File:Office5.png

This is where the real magic happens. Instead of making your building one window at a time, we are going to think big. Select both windows as shown above. Then copy them as shown above.

Repeat

File:Office6.png

Do this until you are satisfied with the size of your wall.

Go Up Too

File:Office7.png

Then copy (ctrl D) your wall section on top of itself several times.

Admire your Lovely Wall

File:Office8.png

Decide when your wall is tall enough. You only have one wall, but believe it or not you are almost done.

Exploit Rotational Symmetry

File:Office9.png

One wall on an office building looks just like any other. So rather than building 4 walls, we are just going to copy. Select you entire wall. Copy it. Using the Rotate Tool to rotate the wall 90 degrees. Position like shown. Or click, drag a little, then press r to rotate.

Do it Again

File:Office10.png

If you are clever, you will see a way to get from the previous screenshot to this one with one copy.

Add Details

File:Office11.png

You are almost done, but we need at least two more things: a roof and a door. I did something simple for both. Make a roof but putting a big brick over the top of the building. Make a door by deleting some of your windows. There are other details you could add to this building. Put some furniture or stairs inside. Add a flag to the top. Add a floor. Put some trees around it. Expert builders know that attention to detail makes a good model great.

Afterthought:

Formally trained mathematicians will realize that copy lets us build an arbitrarily large structure, very quickly. In short, it is very powerful.