Scale in 3D

This is probably 3D programming 101, but what are the guiding principles when deciding on the scale of objects in 3D space? Take, for example, the ‘Lights’ example (among others), where the camera is just a few z-units away from the monkey entity. Then, scale is used to make the monkey smaller. All that, compared to putting entities further away from each other, maybe not calling `scale’, but having larger x/y/z position values.

It appears that there is no difference beyond the obvious increase/decrease in Number values when writing the code, and for small throw-away projects the whole point is probably moot (I ‘hear’ you @dave1707 !). But for production-worthy code, is there a ‘right’ way? Are there performance differences when rendering becomes intense, for example? Or something about GPU number crunching that likes numbers one way over the other? Oooorr, do models not render well if scale is called with large values?

@brianolive I guess it depends on what you’re doing. If you’re 3D space is large, you can place the object full size far away. If you’re 3D space is small then you need to scale it. Here’s a link to a 3D game I wrote that doesn’t use scale. My 3D space is 400 by 400.

https://codea.io/talk/discussion/8932/starter-game-22#latest