Table of Contents
Understanding Parts in Roblox Studio
In Roblox Studio, almost everything you see in a 3D scene is built from Parts and other basic objects. Parts are the building blocks of your world. Learning how they behave and how to create them is the first step to making your own maps, levels, and structures.
A Part is a 3D object that exists in the Workspace. It has a position, a size, a shape, and a material. Parts can be used as floors, walls, platforms, decorations, or anything else you can imagine. When you create a new baseplate project in Roblox Studio, the large green ground you see is made of one big Part.
Roblox Studio gives you several basic Part shapes. The default shape is a block, which is a rectangular box. You can also create spheres, wedges, and cylinders. Each shape has the same basic properties like size and color, but their geometry is different and useful for different kinds of designs. For example, wedges are helpful for slopes or ramps, and cylinders are good for columns or wheels.
To insert a new Part, you can use the menu at the top of Roblox Studio. When you click the Part button, a new block appears in the Workspace, usually near the center of your camera view. If you open the small dropdown on the Part button, you can choose specific shapes, like Sphere, Wedge, or Cylinder, instead of changing it later. Every Part you insert will appear in the Explorer under the Workspace, so you can always find it and select it there.
Once your Part exists, you can move, rotate, and scale it, but the details of those tools belong to a later chapter. For now, it is important to understand that each Part has a Position property that stores where it is in 3D space, a Size property that stores how big it is in each direction, and an Orientation property that stores its rotation. These are all visible and editable in the Properties window when you have the Part selected.
Important: Every visible solid object in a basic Roblox world is usually a Part or a model made from multiple Parts. Understanding Parts is essential for building anything in Roblox Studio.
Key Properties of Parts
Each Part has many properties, but some are especially important early on. Properties describe how the object looks and behaves. You can view and change them in the Properties window after selecting a Part in the 3D view or Explorer.
The Name property is how you or your scripts can refer to the Part. Giving clear names, like FinishLineBlock or LavaFloor, makes it easier to work on your game later.
The Size property defines the part’s width, height, and depth. It is a vector with three numbers, written as $(x, y, z)$. For example, a standard block might have size $4, 1, 2$. Larger values make the Part longer in that direction. When you scale a Part using the scale tool, these numbers change.
The Position property tells Roblox where the center of the Part is, again as $(x, y, z)$. You do not need to calculate these values yourself when you are building by hand, but it helps to know that every Part has a specific 3D location in the world.
The Color property changes how the Part looks. You can pick from a color palette, or enter a specific color. The Material property makes the surface look like wood, metal, plastic, grass, and more. Materials can change how your level feels visually. A metal platform feels different from a grass hill, even if it uses the same Part shape.
The Transparency property controls how see through the Part is. A transparency of $0$ is fully solid and visible, and a transparency of $1$ is completely invisible. Values in between create glass like or ghost like effects. The Reflectance property controls how shiny and reflective a Part appears.
Another important property is CanCollide. If CanCollide is true, players and other physical objects will collide with the Part and cannot pass through it. If CanCollide is false, the Part can still be visible, but characters can walk through it. This is useful for effects, triggers, or decorations that you do not want to block players.
Anchoring and collisions are covered in more detail in a later chapter, but you should know that each Part also has an Anchored property that determines if physics can move it or not. Anchored Parts will stay in place, while unanchored ones can fall or be pushed.
Key rule: If something in your world is blocking players, it usually has CanCollide = true. If it is just visual, it can have CanCollide = false. If you want it to stay exactly where you put it, set Anchored = true.
Basic Object Types Beyond Parts
Parts are only one kind of object you can insert. Roblox Studio includes many other basic objects that are not physical blocks, but are still essential for making games.
A common type is the Model. A Model is a container that groups several objects under one parent. The Model itself is not a visible Part, but it can hold Parts and other items. Models help you organize complex structures and move multiple Parts together as a single unit.
Another important object type is a Script, which you will learn more about in later sections. A Script is not visible in the 3D world, but it contains Lua code that tells the game how to behave. Scripts can be stored inside Parts, Models, or other services. For now, it is enough to know that scripts are basic objects you can see in Explorer, but not in the 3D view.
You will also encounter Lights, such as PointLight and SpotLight, which control lighting effects. They are objects that attach to Parts and affect how the scene is lit. User interface objects like ScreenGui and TextLabel are also basic objects, but they do not appear in the 3D world, they appear on the player’s screen. These UI objects belong to a separate system that you will explore later.
There are special effects objects like ParticleEmitter for particles and Sound for audio. They are inserted into the Workspace or other containers and influence how the game looks and sounds, but they are not Parts themselves.
Although you will use many object types, they all share a common pattern. Each object exists somewhere in the hierarchy that you can see in the Explorer window, and each object has properties you can edit in the Properties window. Whether it is a Part, a Model, a Script, or a Light, you select it and then adjust its properties to get the behavior you want.
Core idea: Every thing in your game is an object with properties, stored somewhere in the Explorer. Parts are the main physical objects, but many non physical objects are just as important for gameplay and visuals.
Using the Explorer and Properties with Parts and Objects
To work effectively with Parts and basic objects, you need to use the Explorer and Properties panels together. The Explorer shows you the structure of your game as a tree. The top level contains services like Workspace, Lighting, and StarterGui. Inside Workspace, you will see all the Parts, Models, and other 3D objects in your scene.
When you insert a Part, it appears in Workspace. If you create a new Model and drag Parts into it, those Parts become children of the Model. This relationship is always visible in the Explorer. Clicking an object in the Explorer selects it in the 3D view, and clicking an object in the 3D view highlights it in the Explorer.
The Properties panel always shows the properties for the currently selected object. If you select a Part, you see Part properties like Size, Color, and Material. If you select a Script, you see different properties, such as its Disabled state. This connection teaches you that different object types have different properties and purposes.
You can change many Part properties directly in the Properties panel. For instance, you can type exact Size values to make a perfectly shaped platform, or set Transparency for a ghostly effect. Small edits in the Properties panel are useful for precise control, especially when you want to give parts exact sizes or positions.
If you accidentally move or rename something in the Explorer, you can always rename it back or move it to the correct place by dragging it. As your games become more complex, using meaningful names and organizing objects into Models becomes important so you can find things quickly.
Remember: Select an object in the Explorer, then adjust its properties in the Properties panel. This is how you control how Parts and basic objects look and behave.
Building Simple Structures with Parts
With a few Parts and basic objects, you can already start constructing simple structures. For example, you can build a basic platform by inserting a Part, scaling it flat and wide, and then changing its Material to something like Grass or Concrete. To create walls, insert more Parts, make them tall and thin, and line them up along the edges of your platform.
If you want to build a staircase, you can create one step Part, size it carefully, then duplicate it and move each copy up and forward slightly. Very quickly, several simple Parts become a more complex structure. Later, you can group them into a Model to keep them together.
You can also decorate your scene with cylinders for pillars, spheres for rocks or orbs, and wedges for ramps. By mixing shapes and changing materials and colors, you can make your level feel more interesting. Even without complex tools, careful use of a few Part types can produce varied and readable environments.
At this stage, you do not need to worry about advanced tools. Focus on inserting Parts, changing their basic properties, and arranging them into simple layouts. Each time you add a new Part, check the Explorer to see where it appears. Each time you change a property, observe how the Part responds in the 3D view.
Over time, you will combine Parts, models, scripts, and other objects to create full game worlds. Understanding Parts and basic objects is the foundation that supports all of that more complex work.