Throughout the Galaxy citizens have houses, and for many of them it is not truly a home unless it looks like one. They are either decorators or hire decorators to make their house a home or to make it a point of interest for other people. This guide will give some general tips on how to better decorate your home.
1. The basic commands
The following are the commands you will need to use in the decorating process:
/move forward 1-500
/move back 1-500
/move up 1-500
/move down 1-500
/rotate left 1-180
/rotate right 1-180
Additionally you can use the radial menu to move in increments of 10 at a time. You click and hold on your item until the radial menu appears and then place your cursor over the move option. Once you do this the Forward, Back, Up & Down options will appear and you can make your choice.
Tip: Making a macro can speed up your furniture arrangement.
2. Tools you will need
Something to sit on (to be explained later)
Furniture
Unique Items
Paintings
Resources/components
Anything else you desire
3. Getting started
It's a good idea to be familiar with your floor plan and have an idea about what type of furniture you want to do and what type of design you want to do.
I have broken types up into the following for this guide. Most designs will fit in one of the categories below, and it may be helpful to choose one before starting your design.
- Home: Decorating your house just like you would a real one
- Business: Decorating your house/structure to use it as a shop/cantina/medical center/other
- Meeting place: Such as a PA Hall or city hall.
- Museum/zoo: Focusing on displays
- Themed: Such as a haunted house, Rebel/Imperial Strong hold, Fortune teller, etc.
- Special Interest: Just making a cool item/design (examples being a Carousel, Pod Racer, Chess board)
Having the floor plan printed out may help you when you are designing. Here is a link to the floor plan layouts in our Advanced Guides.
Floor Plans
4. Planning
Now that you know what type of design you want to do and what house or structure you are going to use you can decide what you want to put into it. There are a few things you will want to consider in this stage.
What type of furniture do I want to use?
SWG Decor is a great fan website with a good list of available items that you can use in your home. You can use this to help you decide what items you like and want to seek out and purchase for use. Keep in mind that all of the player made items can have what ever name you like. So if you are building a shop and want to have a counter made out of the chests you can have an architect (if you are not one yourself) make them and name them "Counter". Personally I like to have them name everything with a * (which is only really practical when you are buying direct) to get the least amount of "name tag floating" in my completed design. Things such as loot drops, holiday gifts, and other rare items are not able to have their name changed.
Once you have the items it is a good idea to place them in the house and get a good look at them. Start experimenting on arrangement/stacking/overlapping.
Many pieces of furniture combined can make unique and nice looking displays/furniture. For example in the Galactic Home Show the fireplaces are made out of various pieces of furniture combined. This can only truly be discovered by trying it yourself, so you will want to play around a bit.
Tip: One important thing to remember when nudging furniture around is that furniture objects don't "collide". That is to say, you can smooch objects together to create new shapes and looks. For instance, notice the red streak on the side of the X-Wing from this weeks Home Show. It's actually a couch that has been reversed and has the front edge jutting out of the nose of the X-Wing to give the appearance of a red streak. Play with the different types of furniture shapes and see what you can invent!
5. Placing
So we have the house, our plan of what we may like to create, and the furniture and other items we need to creat it.
The best way to start out is by using a chair to arrange your furniture. This will help you keep straight verticle and/or horizontal lines. Here are some steps to do this:
- Place the chair and then use the rotate command to position it in the "line of sight" you wish to have for your objects (in this example we will build a counter).
- Drop the items near the position you wish to line them up at, you can leave them all stacked on one another.
- Sit in the chair (which should now be facing in the direction you wish) and then select the first item.
- Using the move forward or back command move the first item the desired distance.
- Continue this for each object you wish to line up.
Items on tables can still be difficult even with the implementation of the up and down command. Keep in mind that each table does have a specific height so once you find the height you may want to write it down for future reference. What I like to do is first place the table and then the item. Then select the item and move it up in increments of 10 until it is at or above the top of the table. This is best judged by being in third person view and tilting the camera so you can see the edge of the table head on. Once the object is in place add up the number of moves and use it for subsequent items.
Tip: When designing your house Symetry or balance is important in making it look good. If a majority of your items are on one side of the house, then you can often end up leaving an ackward feeling to your room.
Paintings/clothing
Some paintings and most clothing come at a predetermined height off the floor, and you are not able to lower this. Remember that when designing and using these items. (Example, head wear will not go lower than a standard sized human's head height) These items are very useful in home decorating though. Many of the skirts can be used as curtains and the paintings are great alone or used in conjunction with other items/paintings to create wall treatments.
Tip: Paintings & bookcases make a great covering for features of your house you want to hide (such as vent openings, maintenance terminals and doorways). You can stack and allign bookcases to make a larger one, resulting in more of a Library or Study look.
6. Unique items
Wondering where they got that painting? or other unique items? The website listed above gives more detailed information but here of a few items that make great house additions that are received from quests and/or events:
- Decorative Basket Paintings (many various quest for these)
- Holiday gift
- Artwork
- Bantha Statue
- Wookiee Lifeday Orb
- An Empty Cage
- Force Crystals
- Krayt Pearl
- Petrified Egg
- Decorative Shisha
- Camera's
- Briefcase
- Datapads
- Pen Sets
- Loud Speaker
- Alderian Flora
- Ornate Rug
- Rebel/Imperial Banners
- Empty Bowls
- Various Bottled Specimens
- Factional Reward Furniture (Do not overlook this some of these items are really good for homes)
- and Many Many More...
Remember.. You never really complete your home...
For more Inspiration or ideas please visit the Galactic Home Show.
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