While you can use your q and e keys to rise up and down through all the floors in free camera mode (tab) it won't let you go below ground level to the basement, unless you have page-downed to actually display only the basement. As soon as you page-up to erect the walls above basement (for example if you have the floor above the basement removed to make a double-height atrium) the camera position relocates to terrain level and you cannot sink below it.
I believe (and I'll have to hop into the game later to double-check) that if you are in live mode (and I use TS3 camera settings) and zoom down into the basement with your mouse scroll wheel, you can then press TAB and move around the camera within the basement level. I recall doing that as a workaround. You are right about the issue though; it's annoying not to be able to just Q & E through all of the levels of the lot.
Edit: Yes, the above method works, and once you're down there in TAB mode, you can use Q&E in the basement level itself; you just can't E up out of the level.
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I don't think that's going to help me. I need the roof up in order to be able to get the screenshots I want, from the basement looking upwards at the atrium and skylights. This means that any zooming in I do will simply get me a closer look at the roof texture, rather than get me down to the basement 🙂 Or am I misunderstanding something?
Ah, I see. The method I described wouldn't work for that. I wonder if you could use a camera set point though. Can't test it in game at the moment, but if you want to try it, go to the basement level, zoom into it and switch to TAB camera mode. Get your camera pointed up (even though it just shows the ceiling at the moment). Hit CTRL+5 (or any number between 5-9). Now TAB to get back into live mode and bump up your levels. TAB again and press 5 (or the number you chose). If it works like I think it *might*, it will pop you down into the basement with all levels still up and the ability to take the shot you want. I'll cross my fingers that it works for you!
Edit: unfortunately, it won't work. While the camera swoops down toward the basement, it won't cross the ground level line while in TAB mode. Sorry! I will be adding this request to our Build Mode Feedback thread also.
Yes I think it's a kind of bug, inasmuch as I doubt the developers intended for us to be prevented from doing this, so it's worth reporting to them in case they can fix it.
Are you sure it's a build issue? It might go to completely the wrong part of the team categorised like that. I would have thought it was in the territory of whichever team do the camera controls. They must have something in the code to stop the camera going below ground and getting the player "lost in space", left over from before they added basements. That would be my guess.
I can't say but I doubt the devs pay much attention to my categorization. It's more my thing to make it easier to find threads for the users.
The devs will most probably read the thread and decided from there who the person is that needs to fix it (or if it indeed needs fixing). It's my categorization, not theirs.
