Design Nomenclature / Form & Geometry

World space

Also called global space, scene space, world coordinates

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

The single global frame every object resolves into — the scene's origin and axes. A vertex's world position is its local position run through its own transform and then every ancestor's, in order, up the hierarchy. Distances, physics, and export coordinates all live here; almost nothing is authored here.

A two-column comparison of which frame the numbers are in. Left, local space: where vertices are stored, origin at the pivot and axes fixed to the object — moving the object changes the matrix, never the vertex data. Right, world space: where everything is finally resolved, the local position run through the object's transform and every ancestor's, in order. Nothing is authored there.

In practice

Which axis is up is a per-application convention, not a fact: Z-up in CAD and Blender, Y-up in Maya and most engines. That single disagreement accounts for a large share of all import failures.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

Affine transformGimbal lockLocal spaceScaleWorld space
Related Confused with