> There are visual differences between scaling a pattern using the
recommended
> FREQUENCY modifier vs. the more generic SCALE modifier.

Well, they do different things. Scale makes everything uniformly bigger.
Frequency just changes how fast it changes from 0 to 1 at any given point.
This has the same result on some patterns (such as gradient), but that's
mostly a coincidence.

> However.... this is not a cure-all for the problem in general.  SCALE does
> not seem to work at all on the RADIAL pattern, wheras FREQUENCY does.

Actually, scaling the radial pattern does work, but has no visible effect.
For instance, if you scale a pattern by 2 to make it twice as big, then the
value of the pattern at, say, <1,1,1> is now moved to <2,2,2> (twice as far
away from the origin). But in the radial pattern, the values at these two
spots are already the same, since they are at the same angle around the
y-axis! So nothing changes.

>  And
> conversely, FREQUENCY doesn't work on the CELLS pattern, while SCALE does!

I think the cells pattern has different behavior than most patterns, and
clips its values to [0,1] rather than wrapping them back around. That could
explain this.

 - Slime
 [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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