SnazzyTools : SnazzyGrid - much more than just a grid!

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...not just a grid, it's a Lifesaver!
SnazzyGrid improves your workflow in Unity. It saved us so much time, it's a true livesaver. We consider time as valuable and so should you. Don't think twice, just get it, thank us later. If you are on the fence just read the reviews. The grid makes it stand out but the other features like child compensation, quickparenting, hierarchy up/down, selection/view saving, per axis snapping, smart focus, uGUI support (and more) make it a truly unique product. Our promise: it will save you hours each day.

With a learning curve smoother than babyskin, you'll have it integrated into your workflow in notime and once you used it you'll always want to have it in your projects. Not convinced?...take a few minutes and watch the videos above and see why SnazzyGrid 2.0 is special!

Well documented & fully customizable...
Apart from the detailed Manual(clicky) and the tutorial video, there is a quickstart-guide integrated into the window. There are Tooltips for every button on the interface, not only explaining the functionality but also show which Hotkeys(all customizeable) currently are assigned. All the documentation is just a labour of love for us as SnazzyGrid 2.0 is so intuitive and easy you wont ever look at the docs! Want different hotkeys or settings? No problem, find and change settings within a second, the intuitive settings window makes it really easy and convinient.

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reserved for announcements...

 

Would this work with the Pro Core tools (ProBuilder/Prototype)?

 

This looks Very Very nice!
Job Well Done!
I have used Pro Grids for a long time and felt it lacking in many ways, but this looks like a winner to me!

 

Thanks, really appreciate your motivating post

It works only on objectlevel, not on vertices... but anyway it will save you tons of time, thats for sure.

 

I am going to get this on Friday (payday).
Looks AWESOME !!!!

Can't wait to use it.

 

Looks awesome! Can this be used in runtime?

 

Cool, let me know how you like it

Thanks! If you mean editing in the sceneview while playing then yes, if you mean editing in the game window then no.

 

Some images from an upcoming PBL Art Pack, its highly modular and allows for unlimited custom arrangements. This room, consisting of many parts(you were also seeing a glimpse of it in the video) was arranged using SnazzyGrid in just a few minutes. Without it, the process would have taken hours.

 

Very Very Nice!

 

Being busy last days, at least now I could get a few minutes to play with SnazzyGrid today. And these 5 minutes made me realise how smart and powerful the tool is. Not only for arranging objects on grid (snapping to grid is just optional !). Quick reparenting is another thing that makes it a bit like Swiss Army knife when working in Unity in general.

 

Thanks for the review!

I realize that the name "SnazzyGrid" is a bit misleading, as the grid is only a part of the tool. Its more like a object-manipulation toolkit. I think i need to communicate better what all the features mean and why they are so timesaving,

Things like hotkey movement/rotation(viewdependent!), quickparenting, child compensation(moving parents without affecting the children), hierarchy navigation, autofocus & other features are a little bit understated. The grid itself (+ the snapping) is a new and innovative thing as it is local(exactly where it is needed) and viewdependet(does not clutter the sceneview) but again, its just a part of a bigger toolkit. So the name might be chosen a bit unlucky...

I hope if anybody is unsure what it actually does, just asks here and i'll gladly try to explain better.

Nathaniel and I would not have gone through all the work to make SnazzyGrid if there was something like it out there already. Mainly we did it to speed up the work on our own projects and found that it is very usefull in any project.

 

Sadly, I have to agree with you, the name does not do it justice.

 

Yeh, the name is not really doing it justice, I've been watching this video over and over again
Lately we are working on a marble game project and have actually purchased a level creation tool which works good enough in its core but has many kinks and dinks under the hood.

So I tried to theoretically apply all the stuff we learned workflow wise and I'm wondering how our workflow actually feels like when you start on a fresh level with your tool ?
http://acumen-design.de/games/mockups/7_30_gradient.jpg
How does one organize all these modular parts for building and selecting them within the unity scene views ?
You don't seem to have any special tile preview feature or anything like that so I guess having many different tiles will be a bit of an organization nightmare, at the moment.

 

It depends of course on the assets and the type of game but for example working with modular assets like the SciFi stuff shown in the video and above images, we do it like this:

Since the models are made out of many parts, i.e. wall01_4m_inside, wall01_4m_outside, floor_4x4m, ceiling_4x4m, different deco pieces, etc, when ever we arranged a prefab that we find reuseable we just hit the parent button(makes a new parent at the center of the selection) name it and put it into a prefabfolder with a proper name, having a good naming convention is always critical if you are dealing with many hundreds of assets but unitys project browser is doing a good job on giving proper previews even of multi selections. also searching by name is a good way to find your stuff. then it is just dragging the things you need into the scene and move them to the right position which is very convinient with SnazzyTools. Lets say i made a new 4m corridor prefab, i just drag it into the scene once, put it to the right place, set the increment to 4m hit *(duplicate) on the numpad move once, hit * on the numpad move once and repeat until i have the corridor, i place then a crossing , a corner and continue.

I'll try to make a video of such a workflow as soon as i find some time

The picture you show also seems like a perfect use case, i would just drop whats needed into the scene and move the blocks around, duplicate when needed and design the level without thinking of organizing, when its done i would go into the top view and marquee select certain areas and use the quick parent features, naming these junks of the level maybe with cordinates, so they can be enabled/disabled or even combined...

I dont see any problem with it but maybe you mean something specific that i am not thinking about. Let me know if you have more questions.

Also i am thinking about a possible rename, to make it more obvious that its not just a grid solution.
By the way, can you give me a bit feedback about the video, would be nice to know what could be improved.

 

This looks cool, I dig the art style

 

We chose proTileMap because it offers a visual preview of the entire tileset, so we can scroll through the list, select the part and "paint it" directly on the grid, however it's quite buggy and lacks some rather important features. But the visual preview and paint tiles thing alone speeds up our workflow extremely as a level editor tool.
Before that we had all elements within Unity and constantly had to check, switch to see we had the correct pieces selected and whatnot. The snapping that unity offered worked alright for our needs, per se.
However your 3D grid toolset is also a neat thing to have, as well as all the grouping and movement tools.
So while I realize the visual preview of tiles would make it an actual level editor, which seems out of scope of what you started with, personally I would have not maximum use for many features of the current status of the project. But I would actually love if these were combined with our current level editor

 

Yes, the issue that i have with the paint like placement (which we also use) is that once you need to move things around that are alreadyplaced, it gets tedious and thats where Snazzy is coming in very handy. I think its very complimentory to all kind of other assets.

 

Problem is, we can't team it up with proTileMap since that needs to be run inside unity, so it can't be mishmashed or partnered with your tool.

So for me, personally, I have yet to find a level editor for unity with the outlined toolset so this might really be a niche for you guys. As a grid extension alone, I don't have the huge urge to purchase atm, however it looks like an absolute pro product, super polished and awesomely documented.
However you might get even more attention by reconfiguring the product's image and function and push the envelope with it

But maybe a video where you build an actual level might prove me wrong.
The visual preview is still the most beneficial element for our level building process. Having to select from a text based asset list or choose each part from a crumbled pool is too complicated.

Best of luck with this project, I'm intrigued just by the professional looks of your presentation. Great job !

 

Jakob R. kindly made a video showing SnazzyGrid in action, the mouse is only used for selecting objects, moving and rotating is all done with hotkeys, making it possible to work super fast:

You can see more about his upcoming PBR SciFi Pack in his WIP thread here: [Modular] PBR SciFi Pack

 

What does it mean that it is a "local grid"?
What would be very useful to me is if the grid could be made local (relative) to a parent object. When placing modular building in a scene I need them sometimes to be at a angle to the global grid, but i still need to place the modular components at the same angle and at a grid spacing relative to the parent rather than the global grid spacing.
Can SnazzyGrid help with that?

 

hmm, not entirely sure if i completely understand what you mean. Are you refering to something like reference planes like in 3d programs?
Local grid means that the grid is always centered at your selection and its not cluttering the screen because of its viewdependency and size. It works perfectly in both perspective or orthographic view, and movement is always taking your view orientation into account so you dont need to think upside down or mirrored just because you are looking the other way.

With SnazzyGrid you can for example disable snapping for rotation per axis and still have snapping for position and/or scale(of course also per axis). If you disable snapping entirely you are still able to move objects on the specified increments with the hotkeys, meaning you can move objects with with an offset from the grid increments, so its like a grid with arbitrary scale and arbitrary offsets. Rotating the grid is currently not possible.

So i think it could help in your case but its probably not entirely what you meant. I think that the per axis snapping/moving/rotating together with arbitrary gridscale and arbitrary increments could help there but i dont know your case well enough to promise anything.

For modular workflows i can say though that using the hotkeymovement is speeding up the work tremendously and it has some nice extra features(quick parenting, hierarchy up/down commands, childcompensation, auto focus with camera orbit) that make modular work much much easier and very enjoyable.

In case you decide to give it a try i would appreciate some feedback a lot.

 

Indeed SnazzyGrid does seem to have a lot to offer in general.

You say the SnazzyGrid is always centered on the selected object, so it is relative to the object transformation but does it also relative to the objects rotation?
The particular case I am dealing with is that I have a series of modular parts with dimensions on multiples of a grid size. In practice I need to construct entire buildings of these parts but often at an angle to the global grid and in a way that sits on the terrain. Think for example of interconnecting wall parts, but then constructing the wall at an angle of 30 degrees. What I do now is I put the pieces together with no rotation, parent them and then rotate the parent to 30 degrees. Currently I use ProGrids. However, that gets complicated when I need the parts to sit closely on top of the terrain for example the wall segments following a sloping terrain. I find I have to iterate quite a bit to get it right. I cannot simply add a new segment on to a previous one if it has rotated. So I un-rotate teh entire contruction, add the new segment following the grid and then re-rotate the entire construction. It would be much faster if the grid could be relative to for example a parent object and in this example the entire grid is at an angle of 30 degrees.

Is that clearer?

 

Yeah its clear now the answer is no it does not rotate, i think this functionality could be added later, as i was also thinking about adding refenrence planes, but for now we would need to see if the product has a chance on the market before we spend more time on adding even more features.

However, I think it would still be saving you a huge amount of time with your workflow as you say you use parenting for that. With SnazzyGrid you could make a new parent at center of selection and use childcompensation to move the parent to your desired rotation point, disable childcompensation, rotate with hotkeys and click the unparent button if you dont need the parent anymore. You can think of the child compensation and quickparenting feature as a custom pivot point where ever you need it. All of these commands can be set to hotkeys so it should be just a matter of seconds to perform these transformations.

If your slopeangles are mostly at fixed values you can use initial local rotation on X/Z and then rotate on Y in worldspace or vice versa. Rotating an object to a certain angle can be done with a single tap of a hotkey, so that might help aswell.

I admit its not the solution you mentioned but depending on the details of your task it might offer an other way to solve it. If not, i am sure it still would make your workaround 10x less tedious.

Hope that points out a possible solution for your case.

 

I been using this a ton for this past few weeks, today I had nothing but issues , I still love the tool, but the bugs that happen today got in my way a bit, so just to give you a heads up, my Grids would disappear. I have 3 computers, so I would try on all of them , same project , and I would get the same thing. Then , you can't rotate the object. I will go on another computer and then I can. After awhile it will break, then I switch computers to the first one, then it works. I find it odd if I use it for a few hours, with a project,things stop working properly..

This is a different issue, I use NGUI for my UI stuff, I notice if you zoom way in, you can't even use the grids, even at 0.1, it can be useless. Because the grids are still to big as it wont reset the camera to when you have zoomed in. When I zoom in, and my UI images are about 16 by 16.. I notice it bugs out a lot when I move the NGUI camera in and out, it does not reset the grid to it properly.

I hope all of this makes sense, if not let me know, and I will do my best.. I'm super tired since I'm working on my Capstone for my BA.




Thanks

I still love the tool and hope to see these issues sorted out..

 

Hello,

It would be great if we can do a skype screenshare, and you show me what is happening, and I know exactly what is going on to be able to fix it. My account is Nathaniel.Doldersum

Nathaniel

 

Can you make a short video explaining the workflow of this asset.

I bought this and another grid asset hoping they help me snap different prefabs together but the prefabs only snaps to the grid lines and in almost all modular packs i have, the prefabs sizes aren't homogeneous so i can't resize the grid and always end using Unity's Surface or Vertex Snapping.

For example in "PBR SciFi Pack video" you posted above it seems the pipes sizes are 0.25m, 4m, 8m so making your grid 0.25 the prefabs will always snap correctly to the grid lines.

What i'd like to see is a video handling prefabs with heterogeneous sizes e.g. 0.3, 2 , 5, 7

Hope you can understand my bad english

 

Hey, i am not sure if i get you right but you can try to turn of snapping, use a grid of 1(for example) and use increments of e.g. 0.3
When you use the move hotkeys it will give you the ability to use arbitrary offsets. This might help in your case... but again, i am not entirely sure if i understand the issue you are describing well enough.

Can you maybe show a screenshot of the assets that you need to snap together?

 

Sorry for the late reply, I been working hard on my Capstone for my BA degree , I will add you to my Skype . I rebooted my machine and came back to work on it the next morning and the issue is gone. I have not tried on my Desk top again, so when I get a few mins I will see if it happens, if so I will send you a PM on Skype.
Thanks
for the fast replys and great support as always Nath.


But the zoom issue, I would like to show you when I get some free times. That happens still.

 

great assets.

 

I wanted to thank the developers who took the time to rate and review SnazzyGrid on the assetstore, we are happy to see it has a 5 star rating

Big Thanks!!

Also, soon we will release the next product in the SnazzyTools series, its called SnazzyPaint and will make material assigning and also materail management super convinient.

I look forward to reveal more...

 

Does it support hexagon shape?

 

Any word on Unity 5 support?

 

Hi,

A) I'm interesting in snazzy grid. I saw the tutorial. I want to use it with "Curvy" from the asset store.
Do you have any experience with Curvy?

But I didn't saw an option that provides to set an global offset to the grid.
If you have objects that based on a grid size of 1, but with an offset of 0.3m to the world coordinate, would that be possible?

Thanks and kind regards

-------------

B) Another cool addition in case of the global offset would be to grab an game object for the global offset position.

C) A measure function would be great. Place a marker or click an GO, then measure from its pivot to any other object pivot on the fly.

 

Sorry, its not really meant for that...

If it does not work we will make it work, should not be much of a problem

I dont know Curvy to be honest. About the global offset, you could disable snapping and use the hotkeys to move objects relative to their position. Another solution is to use parenting to move everything together after you placed it. Or you could use a smaller increment...

B & C are nice ideas, thanks!

 

I'm using it in Unity 5 beta 13 and it works fine from what I can tell. Only purchased it a few hours ago so I haven't tested every feature.

Although I don't think you can view the grid, but I'm not fused about that.

Great tool by the way

 

I don't works with blocks
I would recommended to have an option in the Setting-Dialog that enables a global offset to the grid.
And set the required offset in X[___], Y[___], Z [___].

Is snapping of multi selected objects possible?
Thank you.

 

Thanks for the purchase, i'm glad you like it!
We will look into the issue of the grid not showing in U5 Beta...
edit: U5 is fully supported now.

Snapping of multiple objects works.
The offset in the settings would be neat, Nathaniel and I have a big load of other things to work on, so it could take a little while before we add this feature but lets see...
edit: this feature is now built in.

 

I'm currently using ProGrids; I'm curious how this is different from it?

 

I'd say it serves a lot more purposes, its actually not only a grid(which is 3d and local compared to most grid solutions) but more like a toolset for manipulating objects with ease... Clever Hotkeys FTW! Its all about improving the workflow in unity. Take the time and watch the Video, it explains everthing in Detail. If you do leveldesign, it will save you a tremendous amount of time. We would not have spent so much time on it if it would be just another progrid

 

Hi, Becoming,
I just watched your video presentation of SnazzyGrid, and It looks really snazzy and impressive. Interesting how it in use..)

By the way, I've looked for one simple feature at AssetStore, but not found - snapping to detached customizable guides (like you could do in Photoshop), not to regular grid. May be it could be intersting additional feature of SnazzyGrid, what do you think?

And another one dream - snapping to grid and guides in UGUI... I know about layouts, but sometimes layouts looks too heavy for this.

 

Does this tool snap based on mesh collider? Or is it just snapping to a grid?

 

Yes i like the idea, though you can use planes for that as a workaround and use vertex snapping... but again, i like the idea, if the current 24h deal boosts the popularity enough to consider adding more features we will certainly do so.

No, its not snapping based on colliders and i am not sure what exact scenario you have in mind but there are a lot of features that can be used to have very good control how things are going to be placed... but its a nice idea and like i mentioned above, if there is enough popularity we will consider to add more features to it.

 

Hello.
Can the Unity free version be used with no problem?

 

Sure

 

Jakob R. aka Modular showed me his progress on his PBR SciFi Pack update. Since an early version of his pack was used in the SnazzyGrid presentation video i want to show it to you too:



The [Modular] PBR SciFi Pack forum thread link...

 

Just wanted to compliment you guys on the video presentation. Not sure if someone's a marketing guru, but I was unsure as I already have Progrids. Then about 2 and a half minutes in it was "shut up and take my money!" Looking forward to using this awesome tool.

 

Thanks, i am glad the effort payed off, we found it a bit hard to communicate why SnazzyGrid is special. Just so many features that could be used in so many ways makes it hard to explain...

 

Hi,

Thanks for this - I picked this up in the sale yesterday and have been playing with it. It looks really nice and useful.

I was just looking at ProGrids and wondered whether SG can support a locked/unlocked 3D grid like this:


... as it really helps placement and gives a nice place and proportion to set things out. I looked through the documentation and played around quite a bit, but I could not see this feature as the grid seems "local" to the current object. If there was a way to lock the grid to an object e.g. by dragging the object to a field in the SG Inspector, then perhaps this might be achievable without too much additional effort. If this were possible then you may be able to have multiple such grids selectable by having a drop down combo box in the SG Inspector - thereby allowing the user to change really quickly.

The other thing I noticed which might be a slight bug is that when "Focus" is on and I move a block around, the screen is really jerky / judders when it follows the block. Is this something you have noticed or are aware of? (I'm on a Mac)

Another bug seems to be the rotation does not snap when using the Rotate Widget whereas it does when using the Move Widget. This applies also when changing the field in the Inspector i.e. it does not snap. Also I think it would be nice if the rotation snap was not just to a single Axis (X/Y/Z) - as these are mutually exclusive at present - it would be nice if all/any could be selected such that rotating with the widget or through the inspector fields could be achievable.

EDIT - the above rotation snap does seem to work after initially not working - not quite sure why or how, but it does seem to work sometimes, but not others.


Hope you don't mind the feedback

Cheers,

Nalin

 

The focus is only intended for moving object with the move hotkeys, this is a limitation how translation works in unity... so if you want to move objects with the move gizmo better turn off the focus...

i did not try this but i think you can attatch the SnazzyGrid Shader/Material to a regular plane mesh and then you have a locked grid... i will try it in the next days and see if that is feasible or if it should be added as a feature...