Add a Floor, Walls, Sky and Player Start to Make a Real Space

From empty void to a place you can stand in

Right now your level is probably an empty grey expanse — or worse, a black nothing. In this lesson we'll fix that by building the four things every playable space needs: a floor to stand on, walls to enclose it, a sky overhead so it doesn't look like deep space, and a Player Start that tells Unreal exactly where to drop you when you hit Play.

None of this requires any art, modelling or code. We'll use Unreal's built-in shape actors — a flat box for the floor, taller boxes for walls — exactly the way professional level designers 'block out' a space before a single piece of finished art exists. By the end you'll press Play and find yourself standing inside a room you built. That moment, the first time the level is genuinely yours to walk around in, is the one that hooks most people.

Build the room, sky and spawn point

Work top to bottom. Each row stays ticked even if you close the page and come back, so you can step away mid-build.

1. ✓
   1Lay the floor

   Open the green '+ Create' (Quickly Add) button in the top toolbar, go to the Shapes submenu, and drag a Cube into the viewport. (A Plane works too, but a thin Cube has real thickness so you can never fall through it.)

   With the cube selected, press R for the Scale tool and stretch it out wide and flat — something like 20 on X and Y and 0.2 on Z — to make a broad, thin slab. Set its position to roughly 0,0,0 so it sits at the world origin.

   TipType exact numbers into the Location and Scale boxes in the Details panel on the right instead of eyeballing the drag — precise, repeatable, and far less fiddly.

2. ✓
   2Stand up the first wall

   Drag in another Cube. Scale it so it's long, tall and thin — a wall shape. Move it (W for the Move tool) so its base sits on the floor at one edge.

   It's normal for the wall to start half-buried in or floating above the floor. Nudge it on the Z (blue) axis until it rests neatly on the surface.

   TipTurn on grid snapping (the magnet icons in the top-right of the viewport) so walls click into tidy, aligned positions instead of landing at random sub-pixel offsets.

3. ✓
   3Copy the wall three more times

   Select your wall and press Ctrl+W to duplicate it (or hold Alt and drag the move gizmo to drag-copy). Position the copy along the opposite edge of the floor.

   Make two more copies and rotate them 90° (press E for the Rotate tool, or type 90 into the Z rotation in Details) to close off the remaining two sides. You now have four walls boxing in the floor.

   TipAlt+drag on a move-gizmo arrow makes a copy and positions it in one motion — the fastest way to lay out repeated pieces like walls or pillars.

4. ✓
   4Add a sky

   An empty level often has no sky, so everything above the walls is pure black. Open the '+ Create' menu and look under 'Visual Effects' (or 'Lighting') for SkyAtmosphere, and place one — instantly you get a blue sky and a horizon.

   Even simpler: open Window → Env. Light Mixer (the Environment Light Mixer). It has buttons to add a Sky Atmosphere, a Sky Light, a Directional Light (your sun) and clouds in one place, so you can set up a complete sky in a few clicks.

   TipIf the sky looks blue but the room is gloomy, you're missing light, not sky. Adding a Directional Light (the sun) and a Sky Light from the Env. Light Mixer fixes the darkness — that's the focus of the next lesson.

5. ✓
   5Place the Player Start

   In the '+ Create' / Place Actors panel, find 'Player Start' (it's under Basic, and you can also type 'Player Start' into the panel's search box). Drag it into the middle of your room.

   Lift it slightly so its base sits just above the floor — a Player Start buried in the floor or floating high up can spawn you stuck or falling. The little blue arrow on it shows which way you'll be facing; rotate it to point where you want the player to look.

   TipThink of the Player Start's arrow as the player's nose. Aim it at the most interesting part of your room so the first thing they see is your best work.

6. ✓
   6Press Play and check it

   Click the Play button in the toolbar (or press Alt+P). You should spawn standing on your floor, inside your walls, under a sky.

   Walk around with WASD and look with the mouse. If you spawned somewhere odd, stop play (Esc), nudge the Player Start, and play again.

   TipPress F8 while playing to 'eject' from the character and fly the editor camera around the running game — brilliant for spotting a gap in your walls or a wall that isn't reaching the floor.