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Precise Place is a Happy Artist tool for intentional manual placement. A preview object follows the cursor in the scene view. Click to place it, or drag to reposition along a stroke. While the preview is active, hold hotkeys to rotate, scale, or offset its position without leaving the tool.
New to Precise Place? Follow the step-by-step Precise Place — Getting Started tutorial first.

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Supported resource types

Precise Place supports:

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How it works

  1. Move the cursor over the scene view. Precise Place raycasts to the surface and immediately places a preview object there.
  2. Click to confirm placement at the current cursor position.
  3. Click and drag to continue placing objects along the stroke. New placements fire according to the Spacing setting — the next object appears once the cursor has moved at least Spacing units from the last placement point.
  4. While the preview object is active, use the mouse action hotkeys to rotate, scale, or offset it before confirming.
  5. Press Tab to reset the preview object’s transform back to the original Prefab values.

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Tool-level controls

Precise Place uses Precise Place Tool Settings.

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General

  • Remember Past Transform — when enabled, the next preview object starts with the transform (position, rotation, scale) from the previous placement. Default is true.

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Mouse Drag Settings

  • Spacing — minimum distance in world units between consecutive placements during a drag stroke. Default is 5. Minimum allowed value is 0.5.
  • Random Select Prototype — when enabled, each new placement picks a random prototype from the active group instead of always using the selected one. Default is true.

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Prototype Toggle Settings

  • Use Transform Components — when enabled, applies the Transform Components stack to each placed object. Default is true.
  • Overlap Check — when enabled, rejects placements that overlap existing objects, using per-prototype Overlap Check Settings. Default is false.
  • Visualize Overlap Check Settings — draws the overlap check shapes in the scene view. Only available when Overlap Check is enabled. Default is false.

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Move Action

These settings control how the preview object moves when you hold Q and drag horizontally.
  • Align — when enabled, the placed object aligns to the surface normal at the placement point. Default is false.
  • Weight To Normal — when Align is enabled, blends the object’s up direction between world up and the surface normal. At 1 the object fully follows the surface normal; at 0 it uses world up. Default is 1.
  • Along Stroke — when enabled, rotates the object to face the direction of the drag stroke. Default is false.

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Prototype-level controls

Each prototype has a Precise Place Settings block with:
  • Position Offset — shifts the object’s Y position after it lands on the surface. Default is 0.
Depending on the tool-level toggles, prototypes also show:

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Mouse actions

While a preview object is active, these hotkeys modify its transform in real time.

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Move Along Direction

Hold Q and drag horizontally to move the object along a direction.
  • Mouse Sensitivity — controls how strongly horizontal mouse movement translates into displacement.
  • Move Along Axis — Y moves the object straight up/down; Surface Normal moves along the blended direction between world up and the surface normal.
  • Weight To Normal — blends between world up and surface normal when Move Along Axis is Surface Normal. At 1 the object moves along the surface normal.

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Rotation

Hold a rotation shortcut and drag to rotate the object.
  • Mouse Sensitivity — controls how strongly mouse movement translates into rotation.
  • Way Rotate Y — when rotating around Y (LShift), choose Offset to rotate by dragging horizontally, or Direction to rotate the object to face the cursor position.
  • Transform Space — switches between global and local rotation axis for the Y-axis rotation. Only available when Way Rotate Y is Offset.
  • Enable Snap Rotate — when enabled, rotation snaps to the nearest Snap Rotate increment. Default is false.
  • Snap Rotate — the snap increment in degrees. Default is 15.

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Scale

Hold a scale shortcut and drag horizontally to scale the object.
  • Mouse Sensitivity — controls how strongly horizontal mouse movement translates into scale change.
  • Enable Snap Scale — when enabled, scale snaps to the nearest Snap Scale increment. Default is false.
  • Snap Scale — the snap increment. Default is 1.
For the full list of mouse action shortcuts, see Precise Place Hotkeys.

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When to use Precise Place

Precise Place is best when you want:
  • careful one-at-a-time placement with a live preview;
  • manual control over each object’s position, rotation, and scale before confirming;
  • a placement workflow faster than hand-placing prefabs, but more deliberate than a brush.