How To Use The Move & Rotate Tool | Rec Room Maker Pen Tutorial

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap and welcome back to another video! Today I’m going to be showing you how to use the transform tools inside of Rec Room with your Maker Pen. You can use a whole bunch of tools inside of your Maker Pen to transform the way a shape is inside of your room — you can use the rotate tool, the move tool, and there are just a lot of tools available. Today we’re going to be covering all of the main ones, so let’s get straight into it!

Also, if you’re joining for the first time today, make sure to click the link in the description — there is a playlist which has the first ever video of the series. I highly recommend starting from the start because it really does help you along the way when it comes to creating shapes.

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Getting Started — Moving Objects with the Maker Pen

To get started, I’m going to open up the Maker Pen and detach it so you can see it clearly. The first thing we need to do is move Mr. Happy, who is unfortunately blocking the screen! To move Mr. Happy, open up your Maker Pen and click on the Move button. You’re now in Move Mode. Because Mr. Happy is made up of a whole bunch of shapes — including some eyes and a circle — you’ll need to use the Select Tool to select everything on him first, and then use the Move Tool to move him as a group.

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World Space vs. Shape Space

Once you’ve selected your object and clicked the Move Tool, you’ll notice a few shapes pop up on the object. This is a very important part of the tutorial. There are two types of ways you can move a shape inside Rec Room — you have World Space and you also have direct shape-based movement. In the top part of the menu, you’ll find a toggle called World Space. World Space allows you to move the shape around in the world according to a fixed grid that stays the same for every shape. When you turn World Space off, the movement direction changes based on the way the shape itself is pointing — so the shape’s own version of “straight” may be different from the world’s version of straight.

I recommend building with World Space turned on if you’re trying to keep everything nice and neat, though it is subjective depending on your situation. You’ll notice the arrows on the shape change slightly when you toggle World Space on and off. If you ever find that things aren’t lining up the way you expect, make sure to check this setting — World Space is 100% going to affect the way your shape moves.

In terms of the movement axes — the Green Arrow is the Y axis (up and down), the Blue Arrow is the Z axis (forwards and backwards), and the Red Arrow is the X axis (side to side).

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Snapping Settings for the Move Tool

Now let’s talk about the snapping settings. When using the Move Tool, you’ll notice that your object snaps to a certain grid by default. You have a couple of options here — you can turn snapping off entirely, which will allow your shape to move smoothly without snapping to a grid. This is really useful when you need precise movements. If you do need to snap things together neatly, I highly recommend keeping the Grid snapping option enabled.

If you want to be even more specific with how your shape snaps, scroll down to the Position Snap setting at the bottom of the menu. Sliding this value changes how much the shape snaps to a position on the grid. The lower the value, the smaller each snap increment is, making it easier to make fine adjustments. The higher the value, the larger each snap increment, meaning you cover more distance with each movement. It’s worth experimenting with this setting to find what works best for your build.

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Using the Rotate Tool

Now let’s move on to the Rotate Tool, which works in a very similar way to the Move Tool. There are a couple of important settings to be aware of here — Rotate Around Pivot and Rotate In Place.

When both of these settings are turned off, your shape will simply rotate normally. When you turn Rotate Around Pivot on, the shape will rotate around its pivot point. The pivot point can sometimes be located in an unexpected position depending on how the shape was created, but just know that it is possible to change where the pivot point is. With this setting on, your shape will spin around that pivot point rather than its centre.

Rotate In Place is a particularly important setting to understand, especially when working with multiple shapes. To demonstrate — if you select two shapes side by side and use Rotate In Place, each shape will spin around its own individual centre point. If you turn Rotate In Place off, both shapes will rotate together around a shared central rotation point, moving around each other rather than spinning in place individually.

This distinction is really important to understand because it can make a huge difference when you’re trying to rotate objects in your build. I personally spent weeks trying to figure out why my rotations weren’t working as expected, and it came down to this exact setting — so please keep it in mind!

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Rotation Snapping

Just like the Move Tool has position snapping, the Rotate Tool has Rotation Snap. When snapping is set to Grid, your rotations will snap to set degree increments as you rotate the object. If you turn snapping off, your shape will rotate freely with no restrictions. You can adjust the rotation snap value to control how precisely your rotations snap, which is really helpful when you need accurate alignment.

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Watch the Full Video

If you’d like to follow along visually, you can watch the full tutorial video here: How To Use The Move & Rotate Tool | Rec Room Maker Pen Tutorial

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Thank You for Reading!

If you found this helpful, I would really appreciate it if you liked the video over on YouTube and subscribed to the channel — it means a lot! If you want to check out more videos in this series to help you learn how to create inside Rec Room, make sure to check out the playlist linked in the description on YouTube. I also run Maker Space events inside the game which you can join through my profile, so feel free to come along and create with us. Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to see you in the next one!