3D Glossary of Terms
A label to indicate that something is represented using 3 dimensions. This may infer that the subject only appears to be three dimensional but may be viewed on a 2 dimensional medium.
Alpha
Value applied to a surface, texture or geometry to make it partialy or fully transparent.
Ambient Light
Light that is emitted into a scene from no direction. The light is applied to each surface in a uniform manner.
Anaglyph
An image that has been processed into two separate colours. When the image is viewed with two colour glasses (maybe one lense red, one lense green), the image appears to be 3D.
Anisotropic filtering
A type of filtering which while reducing the size of a texture on screen as it moves to the distance, attempts to retain the detail of it by only blending in one direction.
Anti-aliasing
The process of making jagged pixelated lines look smoother by adding pixels which average the colour between two extreme pixels, thus producing a slightly softer edge to a line.
Bevelling
A method of adding an angled edge to a 3D shape.
Bitmap
Literally a map of bits. A bitmap is a representation of an image in a matix of data bytes.
Blending
The process of combining textures by way of mathematical function to create a combined texture on a 3D surface.
Bump mapping
A process by which a texture is applied to a surface which when rendered, displays lighting at different angles depending on the applied texture. The result is a surface that appears to have contours which are not defined by geometry.
Clipping
The process of removing faces or geometry that are more than a pre-determined distance away from the camera
Culling
The process of removing faces or geometry that is not required to be displayed.
Diffuse Colour
A value describing the colour of a surface. Usually described in Red, Green and Blue values.
Direct 3D
The 3D graphics part of Direct3D, Microsoft's API the aid production of 3D software. Enables programmers to write generic code compatible with a wide range of 3D hardware.
Double-buffering
The process by which the current frame is written to an invisible buffer and then when it is done, the screen memory pointer is switched to show the hidden buffer, and the screen becomes a hidden buffer for the next frame to write to. This reduces flicker.
Extrusion
The process of extending a 2D shape along a path to make it into a 3D object.
Fill Rate
This is the speed at which a video card can render pixels to the screen.
Fog
The process of adding coloured pixels to a scene to simulate the appearance of fog.
Frame Buffer
Memory on a video card where a rendered scene is built before being displayed on the screen.
Frames Per Second
Abbreviated to FPS, the number of frames displayed on the screen per second.
Geometry
An term to describe all the data that makes up objects in a 3d scene.
Graphics Processing Unit
Abbreviated to GPU, the 3D processor.
Intellisample Technology
A high quality anti-aliasing method.
Interocular adjustment
The movement of a stereo pair to give a greater or lesser distance between the two images to compensate for an individual's preference.
Jaggies
A term used for the pixelated or square edges on graphics. This can be smoothed by Anti-aliasing.
Keyframe
A point in time in an animation for which co-ordinates are set for a given object. Animations in 3D usually interpolate or tween from one keyframe to the next for each element of the animation.
Level of Detail (LOD)
The process of reducing the number of polygons in a given 3D shape based on its distance from the camera.
Mip mapping
The production and use of several sizes of texture to represent the mapping on a surface at several distances from the Camera. Mip mapping reduces the load on the 3D hardware for objects which are far away from the camera by using a smaller version of the original texture.
nfiniteFX
A 3D engine produced by Nvidia to deal with vertex and pixel shaders. Use to create 3D special effects.
Nimslo Format
A stereo format with 4.5 film sprockets per image width. Used with Nishika and Nimslo stereo cameras
Normal
A vector that is perpendicualer to a 3D surface
nView
A system developed by Nvidia to cater for multiple displays.
Over/under Format
Over/Under format is a mirror system which separates the left and right images. Special mirrored viewers are made for over/under format.
Per-Pixel Shading
The process of calculating lighting effects of each pixel rendered to improve the realism of the scene displayed.
Pixel Shaders
Pixel Shaders alter the surface lighting on a 3D object to create a look that is more realistic than other 3D rendering modes.
Polygon
A polygon is a many sided flat shape. In 3D design terms a ploygon usually refers to a three or four sided shape. In real-time 3D, polygons usually are triangles.
Primitives
Term used to describe simple 3D shapes such as a cube or a sphere.
Pulfrich
This Is a simulated 3D effect using dark and clear lenses. Only works with objects moving horizontally across the scene using and is based on the fact that light reaching the eye covered with the darker lens arrives later than the light that reaches the eye covered with the clear lens.
Quincunx
A form of antialiasing which gives a better performance than standard antialiasing on later nVidia Graphics cards (GeForce 3+).
RAMDAC
Acronym for Random Access Memory Digital to Analog Converter. Converts the digital data of a scene into the analogue signal which can be viewed on a monitor.
Rasterisation
The process of writing 3D geometry to a 2D surface.
Realist Format
A Stereo pair film format used by the David White Company. Also used by Kodak, Wollensak and TDC amongst others.
Refresh Rate
The speed at which the display refreshes the 3d image. Measured in Hertz or Hz. A refresh rate of 100Hz means that the display refreshes 100 times a second.
Render
The process of assembling the data of a 3D scene and displaying it as a two dimensional image.
Shadow Buffers
A process provided by nVidia graphics cards to show 3D object shadows with soft edges for more realistic scenes.
Stencil Buffer
A process by which the renderer tests each pixel as it renders to see if it is in a predefined area and if it is, blend a value with the texture to be rendered. Can be used for composites, fades and shadows.
Surface
A description of a conceptual area of 3D space which could represent the whole display area or a part of a 3D object. A surface is the place on which textures are layered and lights are applied to to create a 3D element that cn be rendered to the display.
Tessellation
The breaking down of a complex shape into more simple ones that represent the same shape.
Texel
The smallest element of a texture map.
Texture
This refers to any image or bitmap data which can be applied to a 3D surface or object face.
Texture Mapping
The process of applying a texture to the surface of 3D objects
Transform & Lighting (T&L)
A service provided by newer graphics cards to improve the speed at which 3D scenes are displayed. The transform changes data from 3D to 2D and the lighting shades the surfaces of 3D objects. When available, these functions are performed by hardware on the graphics card.
Transformation
The process of converting x, y and z co-ordinates of a conceptual 3D object into x and y co-ordinates that can be viewed on a 2D display.
Trilinear filtering
A method of blending a texture from near to a camera into the distance without having steps between mip maps.
Triple-buffering
An extension of double-buffering where three buffers are used instead of two. Compensates for slow refresh rates.
Vertex Shaders
A system which adds extra realism to the vertexes rendered in a scene.
Volumetric effects
Rendering methods that produce the effect that lighting or fog has substance rather than just being rendered on a 3D surface.
Z-Buffer
A buffer which describes a scene in terms of depth which helps to display the textures which are visible and hide the one that are not.
Z-buffering
A way of sorting textures into the order of distance away from the camera. This can help to make sure that textures are properly rendered, especially is alpha values are being used to view one texture through another.
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