Glossary

Absolute (mode)	The position of a point is defined relative to the origin (set by default at the center of the workbench). See also relative mode.
Aliasing	Undesirable visual effect (often called “jaggies”) which appears when rendering curves at angles other than 0, 45, or 90 degrees. Also visible on polygon edges, particularly with high contrast scenarios. See also anti-aliasing.
Ambient (color)	Color of the object in ambient lighting (without shadows).
Animation	Process used in computer generated images to represent movement. An animation can be generated and played in real time or played back from recorded images.
Anti-aliasing	Filtering techniques used to reduce or eliminate aliasing effects. See aliasing.
Scene Manager	The Scene Manager is a scene management system used to sort objects and to manage the hierarchy of a scene. It will allow you to sort objects by groups and sub-groups, by layers or by the materials applied. Hierarchy management is very useful when working on complex scenes.
Bitmap	A bitmap image is an image which is defined by pixels (as opposed to vectors).
Boolean (operation)	An operation based on logical algebra that can calculate the intersection of two objects, as well as their union, exclusion, and more.
Brightness	Brightness is the property of an object to reflect light. The parameters controlling the brightness are: the specularity, the spread, the falloff, and the filter. Example: a polished surface has a narrow and intense reflection. A matte surface displays a wide and faint reflection.
Camera	The tool used to set the viewpoint, view direction, and orientation.
Catalog	The Amapi 3D file manager. Amapi 3D manages two types of files: scenes and materials.
Coons (surfaces)	A modeling technique involving the Hull tool. Works by interpolation between the control curves which delimit the surface (Hull tool, 4-curve method).
Dialog box	Window that allows the user to ask questions or to choose from options. The user checks the box(s) corresponding to his choice(s).
Diffuse (color)	What the object reflects when lighted by a direct lighting (daylight or artificial light).
Extrusion	Modeling process that generates a 3D model from a curve.
Eye	The eye is the point from which the scene is being viewed.
Facet	A 3D model’s small flat surfaces delimited by geometric contours (straight lines or curves), usually a triangle or a quadrilateral..
Falloff	Defines the diffusion of reflection along a surface.
Filter	Controls the influence of the color of the lighting on the color of the reflection (defined by the specularity).
Format	Structure of the data used to save a file on the hard drive. There are numerous types of file formats.
Grid	Intersection of lines evenly spaced out in two or three dimensions.
Hidden facets	Facets of a model that would be invisible from the current viewpoint if the facets were not transparent.
Hidden Lines	Edges or lines of a model that would be invisible from the current viewpoint if the facets were not transparent.
Incident light	Light going to the object. The resulting color of the object depends on the incident light and the intrinsic object color.
Interface	Communication facility between the computer and its peripherals or between the user and the software.
Keyframe	A term used in animation. Creating keyframes means that you distort or move your model (move it to different locations, change its scale, bend it, pull points, ...) and that you define when those transformations take place. See also keyframe editor.
Keyframe Editor	Editor of keyframes used to create an animation. Between two keyframes, the key-frame editor will, using linear interpolation, compute all the intermediate frames, thus building the animation.
Layer	A layer is a system used to classify objects. The Scene Manager is the tool used to manage this system. Objects can be assigned to a layer.
Layer (2)	A material is defined by a uniform layer and the superposition of higher level layers (textures or mappings).
Lighting	Lighting is the propagation of rays of light originating from a natural or artificial light source.
Luminance	Reflected or emissive light intensity of a surface in an given direction.
Mapping (image)	Mapping of an image (texture map) on a surface (describing a volume or not). There are different types of mapping depending on how the image is projected onto the object, and on the interaction between the projection and the surface of the object. For example, planar, spherical, cylindrical…
Material	A material defines the appearance of a surface. It is defined by one or several layers, which are: the uniform level zero layer and a superposition of higher level layers (which can be textures or mapped images).
Phong	Shading method using normal interpolation for each point of a shape. It doesn't take into account indirect lighting, such as reflection from other objects.
Procedural textures	A procedural texture is the result of a mathematical computation. One can control different parameters defining its structure (scale, perturbation, orientation etc…). Procedural textures involve algorithms instead of images.
Pulldown menu	Menu appearing when the user presses a key or clicks on a button and that disappears once the selection is made.
Ray-tracing	Rendering technique that produces near photo-realistic images by shooting rays from the viewpoint’s eye position through each pixel of the scene’s image and computing where such rays hit an object’s surface. Raytracing can produce images that mimic optical effects such as refection of a polished or chrome (mirror) surface, refraction through glass, and shadows.
Smoothing	Allows the user to control the number and size of facets defining a surface or the number of segments defining a curve. The higher the smoothing value, the smoother the object will look.
Target Point	Point toward which the eye is looking.
Radiance	Determines the light generated by an object’s surfaces, independent of any external light source.
Redraw	Refreshing the image displayed on screen to eliminate any display artifacts caused by erasing and undrawing.
Reflection	Surfaces reflect to some degree the surrounding colors. The reflection determines the ratio between reflected light and incident light (in the case of a lighted surface). You can set the reflection using the corresponding slider.
Relative (mode)	The position of a point is defined relative to the position of the previously entered point. See also absolute mode.
Rendering	Rendering is the process that computes and displays a scene. Computations are based on pre-defined algorithms that take into account: the geometry of the objects (modeling), the materials applied to those objects (metal, marble, wood, etc.), the lighting, the point of view and, finally, the interaction that all those elements may have between each other (shadows, reflections, etc.).
Scene	A scene consists of objects created in a same work space.
Specularity	Specifies the color and intensity of the reflection on an object.
Spread	Specifies the size of the reflection of a light source on an object.
Style	Defines a way to draw an object. It is characterized by a contour (edge) line and a fill color.
Texture (2D and 3D)	A 3D texture describes the structure of a pattern in the three dimensions algorithmically. A object to which such a 3D texture is applied is, in a way, sculpted from this material. We can define some parameters of its structure (scale, perturbation grain, orientation, etc.). It is also possible to set the colormap of a 3D texture. A 2D texture describes the structure of a pattern in the two dimensions algorithmically. A 2D texture can be mapped and some parameters describing its structure can be modified (scale, perturbation, grain, orientation, etc.). It is also possible to set the colormap of a 2D texture. 2D textures can also consist of an image instead of an algorithm.
Transparency	Surface property defining the quantity of incident light transmitted through the surface of the object.
View point	The view point is what is in front of the observer’s eye. It is determined by the position of the eye, a target point defining the viewing direction, and the visual field (field of view).
Visual field	The region of space that the eye can perceive when looking at the target point.
Window	An area on the screen, outlined, where data is displayed.