Unity 3d - ProBuilder Series - The "Poly Shape" tool as the base to start new 3D shapes in Unity

In this part of the Unity ProBuilder tutorial series, I'll show how to use the "Poly Shape" tool in the ProBuilder interface. This is a great option for creating 3D environments such as buildings or any custom 3d shape! Also check out How to Make a Bounce Game Series https://bit.ly/39HIYBU. Conte

Continuing the ProBuilder series, this tutorial covers the New Poly Shape tool — draw a footprint from above, extrude it to height, and you have a room. It's the fastest way in Unity to block out interior spaces, and unlike most modeling operations, the result stays editable afterward.

Step 1 — Switch to a top-down view Poly Shape works by drawing a 2D outline, so get the camera looking straight down. Click the Y axis on the scene gizmo in the upper right corner of the scene view. Drawing a floor plan from a perspective angle is possible but needlessly hard.

Step 2 — Turn on ProGrids for snapping ProGrids gives you snapping, which is what turns a rough drawn outline into clean square geometry. Install it from the Package Manager under the Pro tools. Note that ProGrids may be a preview package — if you don't see it, open Advanced in the Package Manager and enable Preview Packages, which exposes a set of packages hidden from the standard Unity Registry view. Once installed, open the ProGrids dialog and set snapping to 1 unit. Your cursor will now lock to the grid lines as you draw.

Step 3 — Draw the footprint Select New Poly Shape and click points to trace an outline. For a building, this is the floor plan — click a corner, click the next, and keep going around the perimeter. With grid snapping on, the corners land square without any effort. Close the shape when you're done and you have a flat plane in the outline you drew.

Step 4 — Extrude to height Return to your normal perspective view and you'll see the shape is currently just a flat plane. Set the extrusion value to give it height. Three meters is a reasonable ceiling height for a normal room and a good default to start from. The plane becomes a solid volume with walls.

Step 5 — Flip the normals Here's the step specific to interior spaces. As extruded, the shape is a solid box viewed from outside, with normals facing outward — from inside, the walls are invisible. Click Flip Normals to reverse them so the surfaces render from within. Now you can put the camera inside and see a proper room with walls all around you. Skip this and your interior will look like it has no geometry at all.

Step 6 — Commit the shape Click Quit Editing to finalize. The shape becomes a normal ProBuilder mesh you can select, move, and texture like any other object.

Step 7 — Go back and change it The tool's real advantage is that the drawing stays live. If a wall juts out awkwardly or the footprint needs adjusting, select the object and click Edit Poly Shape. The original control points reappear and you can drag them to new positions, and the walls regenerate to match. You aren't stuck with the outline you drew the first time, which means you can rough in a floor plan quickly and refine it once you've walked through the space.

Between the top-down drawing, grid snapping, extrusion, and editable points, Poly Shape gets you from nothing to a walkable interior in under a minute — and it's just as useful for platforms, terrain shapes, and any other footprint-driven geometry.