Three.js Scene Management Best Practices

When working with cloned objects in Three.js, proper resource management is crucial to prevent memory leaks. Let's address your question about disposing of geometries and materials.

Disposing Resources

Yes, it is generally necessary to call dispose() on geometries and materials when you're completely done with them. Simply removing an object from the scene with scene.remove() only removes the object from the scene graph, but the associated GPU resources (geometries and materials) remain in memory.

However, there are some important considerations for your specific implementation:

Issues with Your Current Approach

Your current implementation has a few potential problems:

1. You're disposing and recreating objects on every animation frame, which is extremely inefficient
2. When you clone objects, the clones often share the same geometry and material instances, so disposing them can affect other objects still in use

Better Approach

Here's a more efficient way to handle your door updates:

JAVASCRIPTCopied
// Only update when the user changes the door count, not in the animation loop
function updateDoors(doorCount) {
    // Remove the old door group
    if (totalDoorsGrp) {
        scene.remove(totalDoorsGrp);
        
        // Only dispose if you're creating new geometries/materials
        // If your clones share resources, be careful with disposal
        totalDoorsGrp.traverse(function (obj) {
            if (obj instanceof THREE.Mesh) {
                // Only dispose if these aren't shared with other objects
                if (obj.geometry && !obj.geometry.isShared) {
                    obj.geometry.dispose();
                }
                if (obj.material) {
                    if (Array.isArray(obj.material)) {
                        obj.material.forEach(material => material.dispose());
                    } else {
                        obj.material.dispose();
                    }
                }
            }
        });
    }
    
    // Create new door group
    totalDoorsGrp = cloneDoors(doorSetup, singleDoorGrp, doorCount);
    scene.add(totalDoorsGrp);
}

Recommendations

1. Don't update in the animation loop: Only update the doors when the user changes the count through the GUI
2. Be careful with shared resources: If your clones share geometries or materials, disposing them can affect other objects
3. Consider object pooling: Instead of creating and destroying objects, consider reusing them
4. Check for array materials: Some meshes have an array of materials, so handle that case

By following these practices, you'll have better performance and avoid potential memory leaks in your Three.js application.