Planning Your Pieces

When you are building a room, there are only a few pieces to prepare. Before starting to build your set, map out the parts you need.

A complex set, that is more intricate in its design, will require more careful planning. Not only will you have to list the pieces you'll need, but you will also have to think about what can be reused. If you have a series of windows in your set, you would create a symbol out of the drawing, rather than copy paste it several times all over your set. This way, if you need to make any correction to its design, you will only need to do it once and all the instances of your symbol throughout your set will be corrected. The same can be done with for each pieces of your set.

Here is an example of all the source drawings required to build the castle.

Those are the only drawings required to build the entire castle. As you can see there are not that many considering the final result. The rest is constructed by assembling symbols and through reuse. However, keep in mind that although you are using simple drawings and symbols to optimize your set, the more your add to your project, the heavier the toll it takes on your machine's RAM. While the scene's package itself is really light, running the scene places heavy demands on your RAM and video card.

Using the drawings shown previously, here are a couple of pieces that were put together.

Here is the final result, a large and impressive fortress.

Map out the parts you need before you start to build the set

For a complex set, you need to plan more and, as it is a much more intricate design, it will require careful thought. You not only have to list the pieces you need, but you also need to think of what can be reused. If you have a series of windows, you do not want to copy/paste the drawing all over. Instead, you should create a Symbol out of it. This way, if you need to make a correction to the design, you only need to do it once and it will be corrected throughout. You can do the same for every piece of your set.

Related Topics 

Using Complex Sets in Production Scenes
Positioning the Layers
Creating a Symbol
Importing a Symbol