How to Rotate Models in MagicaVoxel

As you create more voxel art in MagicaVoxel you will eventually come across a situation where you need to rotate an object in order to give it a different angle. MagicaVoxel has a set of features that are up to the task however. In this quick tutorial, we will show you how to rotate a model inside of MagicaVoxel.

Rotation Tools in MagicaVoxel

When working with Rotation in MagicaVoxel there are two ways to rotate a object. The first method is using the Rotate tool, also called the Rot tool for short, located inside of the Edit window. The second method is by entering a command into the Console window located at the bottom of the editor. We will be covering both methods in this tutorial.

This tutorial uses MagicaVoxel 0.99.6 or newer. If you need help installing MagicaVoxel, view our previous tutorial How to Install MagicaVoxel. There you can find a step by step tutorial on getting MagicaVoxel running on your computer.

Getting Started

To begin let’s open up the MagicaVoxel Editor. For this tutorial we will use a the "monu10" sample model that comes with MagicaVoxel inside of the Project window on the right side.

How to Use the Rotate Tool in MagicaVoxel

As we mentioned before, the first method for rotating your model in MagicaVoxel is to use the Rotate tool. The Rotate tool is located in the Edit Window on the right side of the editor and goes by the abbreviation Rot.

Go ahead and click on the button. When you do you should see 3 new buttons that appear directly underneath it. They are labeled X, Y, and Z to match with their corresponding axis on the grid. 

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If you click on any of these buttons it will rotate the entire model by 90 degrees on the matching axis. So if you click X you should see something like this:

Or if you decide to click on the Y button the model should rotate to something like this:

And last but not least, if you select the Z button you will end up with your model looking similar to this:

This is a great way to quickly rotate your model on any of the 3 axis very easily. It also automatically resizes your grid to match the rotation. However you may have noticed that there is no way to rotate the model by a different amount, for example by 45 degrees. In order to do this you will have to try our second method for rotating your model, which is using the Console window. 

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How to Rotate a Model using the Console

Even though the console looks a little intimidating it is actually really fun and easy to use. The benefit of this approach is that you can enter custom degree amounts to rotate your model. To begin lets resize our grid so we have enough room to rotate our model.

Now that we have plenty of room lets navigate over to the Console window which is located at the bottom of the editor.

This text box allows you to enter commands into MagicaVoxel to perform different operations on your voxel models. For this tutorial we will be focusing on the rot command which allows you to rotate objects in your scene. Go ahead and type in the command below:

Now lets break it down:

1. rot - This stands for Rotate. This is the command for performing rotation.
2. x - This is the axis that you want to rotate your model on. You can also use y and z.
3. 45 - This is the degree amount that you want to rotate your model by. This can be from 1 - 359.

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Go ahead and hit enter to run the command. You should see something like this:

As you can see the model has been rotated on the x axis by 45 degrees. But there is also one more interesting detail. If you look closely at the model you'll notice that MagicaVoxel has repositioned the voxels to match the new rotation.

The reason is because voxels must always be aligned to the grid. They cannot be angled. So when we rotated it, the voxels where positioned to resemble the final shape as closely as possible while aligning to the grid.

No that you got the hang of it, try rotating on a different axis or entering a custom degree amount. This is what we came up with.

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Wrap Up

Rotation is an extremely important tool in MagicaVoxel and is one of the key ways to create some unique and creative voxel models by simply rotating it in a different direction. 

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