Why change the pixels per unit instead of object scale?

[KarlManning]

Why change the pixels per unit of a sprite instead of scaling it

Thanks

[Gerald_Burke]

There are actually a number of reasons:

1. Having a universal pixel per unit can help you to have a universal pixel density. With pixel art, objects can look out of place if the ‘pixels’ that make them up are much larger or smaller than the ‘pixels’ that make up the world or objects around them.

2. The physics engine uses world units to determine certain physical interactions. A commonly accepted stand in is that one unit equals one meter. So, if you have an object that is 32 pixels tall and the ppu is set to 16, that’s a two meter tall object. If you change the ppu to 32, that becomes a 1 meter tall object and physical interactions will change accordingly. It’s important to establish a standard here.

3. It can make stuff like tiling, grids, and snapping way easier. If you have a 16x16 character and you have 16 pixels per unit, your character will be one unit.