How to reference the position of an object to one another

Questions & Answers
1

I’m doing an L-System algorhithm with Unity, and want it to grow instantiating copies of the same object. By the other hand, each object slowly scales up, too.

I want each object to stay next to the others, but not invading their space volumes. How can i do that?

The code of the objects is as follows:

void Start ()
    {
    iterations = 0;     

    transform.localScale = new Vector3(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f); // The initial scale.
    }

void Update ()
    {
    // Every copy of the object creates one single clone:

    if (iterations < 90) { iterations++; }

    if (iteraciones == 90)
        {
        Instantiate(object1, new Vector3(0, (transform.localScale.y) + transform.localPosition.y, 0), new Quaternion(0, 0, 0F, 0));

        // This is in fact, the stop condition for instatiating objects.

        iteraciones = 100;
        }

    // Each object scales up during its lifetime:

    transform.localScale += new Vector3(0.0001f, 0.001f, 0.0001f);
    }

I realize that somewhere in the code, i must refresh the position of the copied object to maintain the distance to the ‘father’s’ edge, or to his center position, or somewhat.

Any help is pretty appreciated

2

Doing an 3D L-System is a cool idea. You are going to need to figure out position and rotation to put objects end to end. Here is a bit of code as a demo. Put it on an empty game object and hit the space bar for each new segment. This is not code related to your script. It is a demo script that you can play with and work to understand, and then apply the concepts to your code:

#pragma strict

private var maxAngle = 45.0;
private var currScale = Vector3(0.25,0.5,0.25);
private var scaleBy = 0.8;
private var lastPos : Vector3;
private var lastDir : Vector3; 
private var objectHeight = 2.0;  // Height of object when scale is (1,1,1)

function Start() {
	lastDir = Quaternion.AngleAxis(Random.Range(-maxAngle, maxAngle), Vector3.forward) * Vector3.up;
	lastPos = transform.position;
}

function Update() {
	if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space)) {
		var sphere = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Sphere).transform;
		sphere.position = lastPos;
		
		if (scaleBy >= 1.0) 
			sphere.localScale = Vector3(currScale.x, currScale.x, currScale.x);
		else
			sphere.localScale = Vector3(currScale.x / scaleBy, currScale.x / scaleBy, currScale.x / scaleBy);
		
		var v = lastDir;
		v = Quaternion.AngleAxis(Random.Range(-maxAngle, maxAngle), Vector3.forward) * v;
		v = v.normalized * currScale.y * objectHeight;
	    var endPos = lastPos + v;
		var cylinder =  GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Cylinder).transform;
		cylinder.localScale = currScale;
		cylinder.position = lastPos + v * 0.5;
		cylinder.rotation = Quaternion.FromToRotation(Vector3.up, v);
		
		lastDir = v;
		lastPos = endPos;
		currScale *= scaleBy;
	}
}