Building
From Garry's Goons
Basics
ToolsThe rest of these tools are in the spawn menu, which you open by holding down Q. Most people don't use them all but these are the tools you will find yourself coming back to all the time.
These are the main building blocks for your contraptions. You will primarily be using the Weld Tool. Weld Tool The weld tool is arguably the easiest tool to use in the game. You simply take it out, click on a prop, then click on another prop to "weld" the two together. Easy Weld Tool Now, some people are complete and utter morons and will tell you that the Easy Weld Tool is not easy to use. This is false. Some time ago, the users of Gmod were granted a "grid" of sorts that hovers over a prop. You can lock onto this grid when you have any tool out. With the East Weld Tool, You can lock onto the center of a grid on a prop (this is done by holding the E key down while looking at a certain part of the grid) and then you can click with the left mouse button to "grab" the prop at that location on the grid. Then, you can lock onto the grid of another prop the same way, and agian, click with the left mouse button. This will move the first prop to that location, and then will weld it to that prop. Axis Tool This one is pretty straightforward, but there are a few tricks you can pull with it. Normally, the Axis tool works like the easy weld tool. You click one prop, then click it to another, and now the two objects will rotate against each other, and vis versa. There is a little trick with the right mouse button : You can click with the left mouse button one prop, and then you can move a prop over it, under it, or even across the map from it, and then click on that prop you've moved with the right mouse button. This will make that second object rotate with the other object without having to Move them to each other. Rope Tool The Rope tool allows you to "rope" two objects together as if they were attached by a rope. So, you can click on one prop, then another, and if you throw one of those props, the other one will get dragged along. There are more constraint tools, but they are more or less the same as these, only differing slightly. |
Video created by General Olloth |
Tool Tips
- When freezing something with the Phys Gun, holding Shift+E allows you to snap the object to 45° angles. Perfect for getting everything real pretty-like.
- When constructing anything, use the NoCollide tool to make the parts not rub into each other. Not only will the contraption look and function better, it will have a much lower chance of freaking out. If your contraption clanks, grumbles, smokes or sparks (where it's not supposed to), get to NoColliding.
- Pressing ‘V’ toggles on No Clip mode, which allows you to fly about the level and pass through props, objects and players.
- The weight of props has a direct relationship to the stability of props that are welded together. If your props are wobbling about and acting unstable, increase their weight with a weight tool. The weld will become more stable and less prone to going crazy. Welding two props to each other more than once does not increase stability.
- Thrusters’ push power is equal to the force they are set at times their weight. If a thruster isn’t pushing something, increase the force then increase the weight of the thruster. If that doesn’t work, add an additional thruster, and so on. Additionally, using physically larger thrusters (pop can vs. fat can) with the same force and weight provides you with more momentum.
- Hover-balls can pick up anything if you increase their strength. 3-4 max strength hover-balls are enough to carry anything of any size or weight just fine.
- If a tool's number sliders seem too restricting, most of them will allow you to type in a number manually to increase or decrease the value even further.
Spawn Icons
When you first play Gmod, when you open the prop and tool menu with Q, you will have to generate prop thumbnails for each prop category. The Orange Box update includes pre-made spawn icons for all of the Orange Box/HL2/CS/DoD props, but not for third party addons. This is a very demanding process and can cause your game to crash if the icons are of ragdolls or there are an insane number of them being generated. Try switching into a single-player game for this process if your PC doesn't like doing it in multi, or switch to a map like gm-construct where there is good lighting (which the icons use when they are generated) and there isn't as much to lag you. Try closing the tool menu while they generate too.
