GLOSSARY
==
- 1K / 2K / 4K / 8K
..."1024 / 2048 / 4096 / 8192 / etc."
- 200s
..."200% resolution texture sets upscaled for maximum quality."
- 3DSMAX
..."3D Studio MAX, software for modelling and rendering."
- Accoutrement
..."A fully rigid 3D model used to decorate another non-rigid 3D model, usually tools carried by a character."
- Actualise
..."Making temporary adjustments permanent before exporting 3D objects from Blender."
- Airtight
..."Describes the need to make environments and especially their clipmap fully leak-proof, for various reasons."
- Aliasing
..."When the render or textures used in the render display sharp artifacts and shimmer, not a smooth result."
- Alpha
..."Black and white spectrum used for things like transparency and blending, a grayscale image embedded in another as an extra channel."
- Alpha-Channel
..."The image channel used as alpha, last 8 of 32bits."
- Alphablend
..."A shader that uses a full 8-bit alpha-channel to be semitransparent, often presenting new rendering issues."
- Alphamap
..."Grayscale image to be used in an alpha-channel."
- Alphatest
..."A shader that uses 1-bit alpha-channel for hard on-or-off masking, presenting no rendering issues."
- Ambient (light)
..."The default lighting of an environment to negate pitch-darkness if necessary, usually for outdoors."
- Ambient-Occlusion
..."An effect to darken textures and scenes that is used to dampen extremely bright lights in specific ways."
- Arbitrary
..."Anything acceptable, any random value, without any imposed limits."
- Arithmetic (images)
..."Mathematics used to process images, such as to combine two images, or subtract one colour from another."
- Articulated-Figure
..."A 'bounds' mesh for a character that is rigged to the skeleton to provide efficient and stable collision for its ragdoll physics."
- Articulation
..."The technique of creating textures from geometry, or geometry from textures, in order to visually and technically behave well with LOD."
- Artifact
..."Something unexpected, unwanted, ugly and problematic, usually with rendering and animation-blending."
- Asymmetrical (geometry)
..."A unique form, not mirrored and requiring a full UV unwrap for all unique triangles."
- Atlas
..."To combine many multiple textures together to share the same material and thus become far more efficient."
- Autosprite / Billboard
..."A shader method that forces the material to always face the viewpoint, used for lens-flares and other effects."
- BSP / PROC
..."A compiled map used for Quake and Doom games that carves and merges brushwork to become an airtight contiguous hull."
- Backend
..."Anything about a project the user is not intended to see or interact with, usually only for development."
- Backface
..."The opposite side of triangles that is used for extremely thin objects like paper and fabric, becoming a two-sided surface."
- Backplate
..."Untextured mesh that is hidden behind other opaque geometry that is usually for disguising sparklies, blocking dynamic light or other tricks."
- Backtrace
..."Analysing and following an issue back through every possible code and data that is referencing it, to solve a difficult problem."
- Baking
..."When 3D models are used to capture information from and put into a texture that can then be used for visual tricks and efficiency."
- Bandaid
..."An elaborate type of decal that is formed to follow the contours of a complex 3D shape, placed upon that model."
- Banding
..."When 2 neighbouring colours create perceptible lines because a gradient is too subtle and not dithered properly."
- Bark
..."A randomised intermittent sound that entities like opponents and critters make so they are able to be more locationally situated."
- Base (content)
..."All and only files used for the final build to function."
- Base (model)
..."Minimal basic form used to create multiple versions."
- Basics (mapping)
..."Any geometry of an environment's sector that is always present in all of its own LOD stages."
- Batch (rendering)
..."Like a currency, the cost of rendering one connected group of surfaces with one material, a small penalty to performance."
- Batch-File
..."A script used to perform a sequence of commandline operations used for data-management, automation and file-processing."
- Bevel / Chamfer
..."Techniques used to take a perfectly sharp right-angle and smooth it, essential tools for modern graphics standards."
- Binary / Hexadecimal
..."Compiled types of information that requires more advanced data-management to manipulate."
- Blender
..."Full-fledged 3D modelling software that is free for everyone."
- Blocking / Block-Out
..."Rough draft of a 3D environment using simple brushes to quickly establish sense of area and flow of gameplay."
- Bloom
..."A post-process effect to make bright areas leak a glow and appear powerfully brighter than white."
- Bone / Joint
..."Individual components of a model's skeleton from which its animation is functioning."
- Boolean
..."A technique used to combine or subtract shapes from one model's geometry to or from another model's geometry."
- Bounds / Bounding-Box
..."Simplified representations of a complex 3D model used for physics-collision and hit-detection."
- Breach / Clip-Through
..."When one object passes through the other object unintentionally, such as falling through the floor of a map and into the void."
- Brush
..."A cubic primitive used as the fundamental building blocks in software like Radiant, used for basics such as flat floors and walls."
- Buffed
..."Purposefully increased for balance of gameplay or performance."
- Build (programming)
..."The compiled result of the source code which is then functional but no longer easily editable."
- Bulbing
..."Isolating tiny pieces of information from large files to then be used as values in data-management to process other files."
- Bumpmap
..."A texture used for parallax occlusion in a material."
- Busywork
..."Like monkeywork, but is too subjective to be broadly addressed by any automation."
- Buttertub
..."Taking an extremely low-poly mesh and refining curvature by unique elements. The name of this technique as a whole."
- CFG / INI
..."A type of file used to store custom user settings."
- CSG
..."Constructive Solid Geometry, Radiant brushes."
- Cache
..."Compiled version of data for the sake of loading faster and performing better in the engine."
- Cap
..."The end of a cylindrical object, its closing geometry and its form."
- Carpeting (textures)
..."When a seamless and otherwise quality texture doesn't tile well because its mosaic has noticibly repetitive features."
- Cauldron
..."A complex piecemeal file and folder structure used by data-management and file-processing."
- Chival (programming)
..."To deactivate a process to spare memory for others needing performance, to be reactivated and summed later."
- Clean (geometry)
..."Having no artifacts, bad shading, unwanted seams, unseen geometry, and has good topology, is consistent, with definition balanced with detail."
- Clip (geometry)
..."Invisible geometry providing solidly bounded obstacle to dynamic entities."
- Clip (physics)
..."The concept of one 3D surface colliding with another 3D surface, meaning to prevent them intersecting with and passing through."
- Clip (video)
..."Short, not complete."
- Clip-Bash / Clip-Bomb
..."A technique to quickly paste a sequence of multiple items, usually mapobjects and decals, into an environment for decoration."
- Clip-Through
..."When one 3D surface intersects or passes through another unintentionally."
- Clipmap
..."An invisible 3D object that is a very simplified version of the map used to keep physics interactions as efficient as possible."
- Clut
..."A 'Colour Look-Up Table', data used to coordinate sequences or palettes of colours between one file and another, even 3D models."
- Code
..."Programming as it appears in data, as low-level as possible."
- Collapse
..."Losing isolated specific parametric functions, typically that of modifiers, in order to have something that can be exported and used."
- Commandline
..."DOS-like operations that can be sequenced in a 'batch file' for processing files extremely fast and with the highest compatibility."
- Common
..."A type of material that is detected and used as data elsewhere in its location and proportion, like 'clip' or 'trigger' brushes."
- Compile
..."To take source code or any uncompressed original data and transform it so it's ready for distribution."
- Concave (models)
..."A geometric aspect of having a surface curved to its inner bounds, within itself, like a pit or a dent in a 3D surface."
- Condump
..."Causing the console to output all of its contents to a text file."
- Console
..."A part of the engine or software that allows commandline text inputs used for debugging and scripting."
- Contiguous
..."Directly connected to, flowing across and into, integrated with itself, usually inseparably."
- Converge (models)
..."How and where multiple edges or splines connect to a single vertex, which can be many."
- Convex (models)
..."A geometric aspect of having a surface protruding its bounds, from itself, like a bump or bulge in a 3D surface."
- Convolution (splines)
..."Exploitation of modifiers to invoke illogical complex geometry, using multiple stacked modifiers with intentional negatively-geared values."
- Coords
..."A shorthand for 'coordinates'."
- Corrugation
..."Artifacting at the spline-cage surfacing phase caused by topology with too much density as compared to its logically optimised structure."
- Cross-Section
..."A spline-cage created for and to be combined with another spline-cage, so that they are connected in a topologically precise way."
- Cubemap
..."A set of six images together as a box that is used for static reflections from all sides, much like a skybox."
- Cubic-Clipping
..."A way to limit the distance of a real-time render, useful for working on complex environments without lag."
- Cull
..."To delete/remove entirely, particularly in real-time, on-the-fly."
- Cutscene / Cinematic
..."Any in-game sequence where a non-interactive camera is used for a viewport and content is easier to manage."
- Cvar
..."A console command and its variables."
- DRE
..."'Diametric Reflectivity Extension'."
- Darkroom
..."A small black box in a map used to store objects nearby temporarily."
- Data-Management
..."The field of transforming and translating digital information, even logically and mathematically, used for file-processing, organisation and programming."
- Debris
..."A very low-poly discrete vague model used for a variety of things like destruction effects or pebbles, dirt and junk."
- Debug
..."A vague term to describe to analysis and improvement to code, "
- Debugger
..."A software component used to analyse low-level code in real-time as it appears in memory."
- Decal
..."A material intended to be used on a flat 3D square surface to give the illusion of a unique feature atop another 3D surface underneath."
- Decimation
..."The process of forcing a model to less triangles by brute-force, sometimes used for very low stages of LOD."
- Deprecate
..."To update something, especially tools and workflow, while also leaving the old methods remaining and functional."
- Depth-Buffer / Z-Buffer
..."A part of memory that stores information about the liminal space of a rendered 3D scene from the viewport."
- Depth-Offset
..."A method for increasing the distance of objects like decals from their target surface to avoid z-fighting at greater distances."
- Detach
..."Making an element or group of elements a completely separate object, as a convenience."
- Detail-Mapping
..."A texture used in a material that is filtered, scaled and tiled, and has tight texelation, to give the appearance of very fine detail."
- Diametric
..."Elements of something that are completely opposed in a mathematic sense."
- Differential
..."Programmatic determination between two sets of data, arrays of numbers or an image, providing an output of the differences."
- Diffusemap / Colormap
..."A texture that gives the material its colour, also used in editors as textures for mapping."
- Discreet
..."Creators of 3D Studio MAX 7 (including gMax) and lower, before acquisition by Autodesk."
- Displacement
..."The process of using greyscale images to shift and form vertices of 3D geometry to create features and shapes with it."
- Distance-Cull
..."To cull at a distance, to stop rendering by proximity."
- Dither
..."A pattern of pixels between 2 flat colours neighbouring in a palette, helping to minimise 'banding' artifacts and assist texture-filtering."
- Drawcall
..."How many times the frame-buffer must repeat itself due to complex shader passes and/or semitransparent effects."
- Dynamic
..."Anything that moves or has a transform, not typically compatible with a lightmap and not as friendly on performance."
- Edge
..."The line between 2 vertices, 3 of which make a triangle. This specific editable component."
- Element
..."Any subobject contained within an object such as vertices, knots, edges, splines, faces, etc."
- Emitter
..."A entity used for particles, with properties to help determine the behaviour of those particles."
- End-Cap
..."Geometry that closes the ends of (roughly) cylindrical objects and its style of topology."
- Engine
..."Software that renders everything interactively in real-time and is used to run as a playable game."
- Entity
..."An object in Radiant that is a representation of an external component not actually used by Radiant itself, only positioned."
- Environment (geometry)
..."All geometry that is specifically just the world of the game, constructed by mappers."
- Environment (texture)
..."Images that display a static view of a 360' panoramic environment, often baked from a scene for its reflections."
- Environment-Mapping
..."A legacy shader used for simple reflections and is still used for 'DRE' to give a hyper-reflective appearance to specularity."
- Envshot
..."An in-game capture of 6 screenshots from 6 different angles that can be used as cubemaps for static textured reflections."
- Error-Diffusion
..."Describes variants of dithering that can be used to avoid banding artifacts on subtle gradients."
- Essay
..."Endless walls of text in the compendium that describe workflow techniques and philosophies."
- Extrude
..."Technique for extending any group of triangles in or out and quickly creating either an inset or protrusion."
- FOV
..."Field Of View, the amount of perspective used in a viewport."
- Faceted
..."When geometry is rendered so that each triangle is a unique flat surface unaffected by neighbouring normals and will appear sharp."
- Factoring (models)
..."The aspect of creating 3D geometry so that it's consistent with other assets in the project and is technically balanced."
- Fan-Cap
..."A type of end-cap with an extra triangle to allow a central vertex, as opposed to a 'zag-cap'."
- Far-Clip
..."For viewport-clipping, the maximum value used for its range."
- Featuremap
..."An image used to place mapobjects onto a terrain via its heightmap, with each pixel being a custom asset."
- Fill-Light
..."A type of dynamic light entity that does not cast shadows or animate, but is not part of the lightmap."
- Filtered (image)
..."A shader pass that darkens anything underneath it, used for ambient-occlusion textures, detail-mapping and decals."
- Flare
..."Fullbright autosprite of a lens-flare effect with a distance-scale."
- Floating-Point
..."Decimal places in a numerical value the software is capable of processing in time, and the resulting accuracy of calculation."
- Flush
..."When 2 edges and vertices of 2 discrete objects are exactly aligned and can be welded with zero, allowing a seamlessly shaded transition."
- Folding (models)
..."Creating a hard seam in an otherwise smooth model by intentionally overlapping and layering triangles half over one another."
- Fracture
..."A technique of breaking things apart easily using modifiers."
- Frag
..."When something is blown to small pieces, especially a character."
- Frame
..."A single rendered image from a sequence and its bounds."
- Frame-Buffer
..."Memory where the final rendered image is stored and where post-processing effects take place."
- Framerate / FPS
..."How many times per second a frame can draw, for smooth performance."
- Frilling
..."A technique of stacking edges, pancaking loops and rings, or otherwise extruding extra geometry in order to assist and trick the PatchSmooth phase of spline-cage creation."
- Frob
..."When viewport and proximity is used to highlight and target an object or character and able to be interacted with, opened/closed or searched."
- Frontend
..."Anything about a project intended for the user to see and interactive with."
- Frustrum-Culling
..."Edge of screen-space, outside the frame-buffer, making sure many things are no longer being rendered in real-time."
- Fullbright
..."Not affected by any other lights, lack thereof, and without shading."
- Func
..."A legacy Radiant group of entities for miscellaneous purposes."
- Func_Group
..."A typical way of grouping as an entity in Radiant."
- Func_Static
..."A way to turn anything into a custom entity in Radiant."
- G-Weps
..."Weapon models as seen externally from the player view."
- GUI
..."Graphical User Interface - such as menus and HUDs."
- Geometry
..."Triangles that are eventually used, specifically in-game real-time rendering."
- Ghost-Framing
..."Image-processing techniques to blend frames together and double the amount of them with cheap motion-blur."
- Gimped
..."Purposefully lessened for balance of gameplay or performance."
- Gizmo
..."A UI element in software that allows to user precise control over a transform such as position and rotation."
- Global-Illumination
..."Ability to use radiosity and bouncing for lights."
- gMax
..."A simplified free version of 3D Studio MAX."
- Gradient
..."A smooth transition of colour, a spectrum, new unique rendering challenges."
- Grain
..."The axial flow of something, such as UVs, texelation or tessellated geometry."
- Graygate
..."A tiny grayscale image that is used as information to determine a value in software that is difficult to manage with scripting."
- Grayscale
..."Only being 8-bit 256-colour black & white, data and masks."
- Greeble
..."A small, usually unidentifiable mapobject or prefab used in the process of kitbashing or clipbombing."
- Group (Radiant)
..."The discipline of organising everything in Radiant, using func_group or func_static, or selection sets."
- Hall-Of-Mirrors
..."A phenomenon when there is nothing to render and the frame-buffer just repeats itself, usually seen in the 'void'."
- Handles
..."Axial control points of the knots of spline-cages."
- Hardcoded
..."Something already compiled into a build and the source code is not available, and therefore not easily changed."
- Header (material)
..."A small piece of text that is the name of the material which is embedded into 3D model and map formats as reference."
- Heightmap
..."A texture used to displace 3D models, used for creating terrain."
- Hex-Edit
..."Data-management methods for manipulating binary and other compiled proprietary file formats in the course of development."
- High-Level (programming)
..."Functioning on a level very far from the memory addresses actually used by the computer, very human-readable such as scripting."
- High-Poly
..."A (comparatively) large amount of triangles."
- Hitbox
..."Bounds or geometry used for the hit-detection of an object."
- Hitmap
..."A texture used to give a material different locational properties for projectiles and other interactions."
- Hue
..."The aspect of colour that governs its spectrum."
- Hue-Shift
..."To shift the spectrum of colour as to change a colour of a feature, usually to change the diffusemap of a material."
- Hull
..."The outermost perimeters of any geometric object, the airtight seal of a contiguous 3D object or environment."
- IDE
..."Integrated Development Environment - a suite of tools that can be used from an OS-level and allows all software to function in specific ways."
- IV-Cell
..."Irradiance Volume cell, a compartment of the irradiance volume in which a limited number of lights can reside."
- Image-Processing
..."To process an image file from the commandline using scripting and multiple utilities, mainly ImageMagick."
- Impact
..."A technique for using physics to affect other geometry, for painting and softbody deforms."
- Import / Export
..."To describe loading and saving of files that have been collapsed and refactored for technical reasons and are not originals."
- Increment / Decrement
..."To increase/decrease an existing value by a set amount sequentially."
- Index / Indices
..."The numbered order in which something exists, the order in which vertices or subobjects appear in data."
- Ingame
..."Referring to real-time interactive rendering, being in the game."
- Inline
..."When something is embedded so deeply as to have a negligible impact on performance, such as inline LOD stages."
- Inset
..."Extruding inwards, creating a concave."
- Instanced
..."A copy so exact as to share many other parametric qualities with its siblings, becoming less flexible but better for performance."
- Integer
..."A whole number without any decimals."
- Interpolated
..."Ability for a smooth transition between 2 static states."
- Iridescent
..."The quality of colour bending along its spectrum, shifting hues with movement or an effect that uses spectral offsets of colour."
- Irradiance-Volume
..."Provides the illusion of dynamic objects being illuminated from a lightmap when no dynamic lights are effective."
- Island (UVs)
..."A portion of contiguous geometry in the UV channel that stabilises the mapping projection of the 2D texture to the 3D model."
- Iteration
..."The phase of something that determines its total effect, such as the iteration of meshsmoothing determining its total polycount."
- Jiffy
..."A 60th of 1 second, which is also usually a frame and a tic."
- Key
..."A component of an entity that is a parameter for a particular function outside of Radiant, will many possible values."
- Keyframe
..."A moment in time where various parameters such as positions and rotations efficiently coincide for animation to interpolate."
- Kitbash
..."A crude method of quickly slapping different random objects together for detail, combined with various other techniques."
- Knife
..."A tool used for dissecting geometry in Blender."
- Knots
..."As vertices are to meshes, knots are to spline-cages, far more confusing but also more powerful."
- LithUnwrap
..."External software, standard of UV unwrapping prior to Blender and other modern techniques."
- LOD
..."Level Of Detail, how 3D geometry changes polycount based on the distance from the player, to achieve higher framerates and scalability."
- LOD-Lock
..."Optionally restricting LOD stages from becoming too high, locking a lower stage at minimum distance to improve performance."
- LOD-Range
..."The values that determine the start and end distance of the effect of LOD globally."
- LOD-Stage
..."The appropriate geometry of a particular stage of LOD in the model, which is called to render only at a specific distance."
- LOD-Strategy
..."The method used to calculate the effect of LOD globally, if to use proximity to the viewpoint, FOV, resolution, or a combination of those."
- Layer (Radiant)
..."A vital tool to organise all content in a map in Radiant."
- Leak
..."A test ran on maps in Radiant to determine if their hull is airtight."
- Level-Design
..."A combination of mapping, environment art and gameplay planning, all mostly from within Radiant."
- Lightmap
..."An extremely high-resolution image used on environments to give the illusion of static light and shadow on all static geometry."
- Lightmesh
..."Geometry that is used to derive a light and its colour and size from each vertex of a textured mesh, used to decorate lightmaps."
- Lightshader
..."A shader used to texture and/or change a dynamic light."
- Littering
..."A technique used to decorate an environment using physics."
- Local-Space
..."A unique 3D area and its coordinates in relation to a specific object and its origin, and not the world itself."
- Loop / Ring
..."A row or column of edges/splines that wrap around a geometric form in a cohesive way, that are easily adjusted in modelling."
- Low-Level (programming)
..."Functioning on a level as close as possible to the memory addresses actually used by the computer, extremely efficient."
- Low-Poly
..."A (comparatively) small amount of triangles."
- Luminance
..."The maximum white-level in relation to the black-level, which is not the same as referring to brightness."
- Mantle
..."The ability for the player to climb reachable vertical walls and platforms, and a cubic volume that enables or disables this."
- Map (geometry)
..."Environment art created in Radiant using many different materials, extended to include entities and lights."
- Map (texture)
..."The act of assigning a 2D texture to a 3D surface in a particular way, and may also refer to the texture image itself."
- Mapbit
..."A structure or object created in Radiant that is placed onto a terrain or into the world separately, as a sector unto itself."
- Mapobject
..."Any LOD'd model intended to be used for decorating maps."
- Mapper
..."An environment artist who also does most of the level design using mostly Radiant. Not a modeller."
- Maprep
..."Quickly repairing map files of errors caused by content, filename and header changes."
- Mask
..."Can refer to an alpha-channel, or the effect of an alpha-channel."
- Matbash
..."A technique used to quickly create new materials by combining pre-existing ones in new ways, often for efficiency."
- Material
..."A combination of textures and shaders to create a visually interesting surface for a 3D model."
- Material-Blending
..."When 2 or more completely distinct separate materials are blended together on a mesh with the help of vertex-colours."
- MaterialID
..."A number assigned to each triangle that doubles as a material header assignment, used to get materials onto surfaces."
- Max
..."Ambiguously referring to either 3D Studio MAX or gMax, implying fully compatibility by context."
- MAXscript
..."Scripting language and its files used by Max for automation or plugin-like functionality."
- Mental-Ray
..."A legacy offline renderer capable of CGI-quality results beyond DirectX12."
- Mesh
..."Triangles and quads that form the wireframe of a 3D object."
- Microbrush
..."When a brush becomes infinitely small and lost in Radiant, potentially causing technical problems later."
- Middle-Edge
..."The invisible diagonal edge between one of two couples of vertices of a quad, that will actualise after triangulation collapse."
- Mipmap
..."A lower resolution version of a texture embedded within itself and used at distances and angles, which can be refined and customised."
- Mitre
..."The standard method of joining 2 cubic objects together in a way that ensures all vertices and edges average and align."
- Model
..."A 3D mesh that is whole, portable, has a proper unwrap and relies on the absolute minimum number of materials as possible."
- Modeller
..."An artist with skills to make 3D models. Not a mapper."
- Modifier
..."Allowing parametric editing using a multitude of methods, residing in a hierarchical 'stack' for maximum flexibility (*MAX & Blender)."
- Mogmip
..."A way of automatically mogrifying effects down through all mipmap images of a texture, for effects based on distance or angles."
- Monkeywork
..."Any drudgery just waiting to be saved by automation."
- Mosaic (textures)
..."When a texture is repeating itself and tiling on a geometric surface."
- Motor
..."An entity with simple physics properties to cause constant rotation on any axis."
- Moveable (mapping)
..."Any entity in Radiant that is to be exported as a physics-capable object."
- N-Gon
..."Any surface with more than 4 peripheral edges and multiple invisible middle-edges, allowing clean results for knife and boolean."
- Near-Clip
..."For viewport-clipping, the minimum value used for its range."
- Negatively-geared
..."Opposing negative values or settings to use modifiers differently, in unintended new ways."
- No-Clip
..."A legacy idTech console command that allows traversal through all collisions in real-time, for the player to clip-through the map."
- Normal
..."The direction perpendicular to the planar face of a triangle, something that can be manipulated to adjust shading."
- Normalmap
..."A texture that calculates angles to give the illusion of interaction with light and shadow within the material."
- Nudge
..."To slightly adjust up and down, particularly with RGB values or position coordinates, usually in a random way."
- Null / Caulk
..."A material that is assigned to unnecessary brush faces to flag them for deletion in the process of being exported from Radiant."
- Occlude
..."To temporarily cull, hide while behind another object or in total darkness, or because of portalisation."
- Offline-Rendering
..."Blender and MentalRay are capable of results beyond anything real-time, with rendering measured in seconds-per-frame."
- Onion-Skinning
..."Interpolate frames leaving traces of previous frames present, causing a ghostly trailing motion-blur effect."
- Opaque
..."Anything that does not allow visibility or light through it, not see-through."
- Ordering
..."Discipline of keeping elements in order, such as lights for IV-cells and light-categories, or the vertices of terrain-tiles."
- Origami
..."A master technique for refolding patch-meshes in Radiant for a result close to that of a properly unwrapped model."
- Origin
..."The center point of an object or the world itself, to decide positioning, ground-level and everything potentially relative to it."
- Orthographic
..."The opposite of perspective, having infinitely small field of view and/or displayed like a blueprint."
- Overcurve / Outcurve
..."A curve whose knee is early and falloff is slow."
- Overdraw
..."When many materials are overlapping in the viewport or have too many complex passes, causing performance drops."
- PBR
..."Physically-Based Rendering, the modern standard for materials."
- Padding (UVs)
..."The margin between islands to avoid texel leaking when the texture being used is too low-resolution."
- Palette
..."A defined indexed amount of colours, usually very specific."
- Pancaking (geometry)
..."Like stacking, but sliding/slicing rings and loops already existing in the surface."
- Parallax-Occlusion
..."A shader using a bumpmap that gives a material more of a real 3D appearance relative to viewing angle."
- Parametric
..."A value or adjustment that can exist and be edited irrespective of and independent from all others, harmlessly."
- Parse
..."How formatted data and code is interpreted and accepted."
- Particle
..."A dynamic autosprite quad of a transparent material used in a volume to create effects like fog, smoke, rain, snow, etc. etc."
- Particle-Eater
..."A mesh that exists to destroy any particle that touches it."
- Pass (material)
..."Like a currency, of how many textures, shaders, settings and transforms a material uses, and its cost to performance."
- Patch / Patch-Mesh
..."A square geometric surface capable of smooth form and subjective tessellation."
- PatchSmooth
..."A function in Max (script in gMax) used to smooth the knots of a Patch Mesh, which is inherited by the spline-cage which it can then become."
- Per-Pixel
..."A render element such as a post-processing effect that acts on every pixel in the frame-buffer."
- Periphery
..."The outermost elements existing on any geometric object."
- Perpendicular
..."Opposite of parallel, a feature protruding 90' from its parent surface."
- Physics
..."Simulated gravity and motion by software and engines."
- Pickup
..."An entity existing but intended to be collected by the player."
- Pipeline
..."Refers to the specific scripts and utilities used in the workflow and how, specifically for translating and exporting."
- Placeholder
..."Anything cheap and ugly that is waiting for an artist."
- Planar
..."Perfectly flat on an angle, concerning quads and ngons."
- Plane
..."Any perfectly flat and perfectly square geometry."
- Plateau
..."When a maximum or minimum value has been hit and a result that should be increased just becomes flat, like the white of a heightmap."
- Plugin / Addon
..."A small optional software component to add specific functionality to a program like 3D Studio MAX or Blender."
- Pointfile
..."A test ran inside Radiant to check a map's structural brushwork for leaks and if the map is airtight."
- Polycount
..."The number of triangles a model is created from."
- Polygon
..."A triangle, quad or even ngon, totalled depending on the type of model it is."
- Pop-in
..."Unpleasant visual byproduct of geometry changing too abruptly in a neighbouring LOD stage, or at an inappropriate cull-distance."
- Port
..."When moving all data and mechanics from one engine/platform/renderer/workflow to another to function identically."
- Portal / Visportal
..."A planar surface where one zone ends and another zone begins, to connect these zones in liminal space, depending on vis."
- Portalisation
..."The process of culling large geographical areas of a map from the render, depending on vis."
- Post-Processing
..."A special effect drawn over the frame after it has already been rendered, such as bloom."
- Pre-Vis
..."Like blocking-out, other assets can be cheap ugly placeholder content to rapidly conceptualise, yet to be a final polished asset."
- Prefab
..."Any external pre-constructed mapbit that integrated into a map as brushwork."
- Primitive
..."An original initial fundamental shape or object easily plotted, in any software, such as a brush in Radiant."
- Procedural / Algorithmic
..."Expedited, extrapolated and/or enhanced entirely by mathematics and logic, rather than by an artist."
- Projection
..."Unwrapping, texturing or painting a 3D surface by orientation of the viewport or a camera."
- Propagation (mapping)
..."To add a detail by means of its relation to another detail already present, such as shrubs surrounding a tree."
- Puppeteer (animation)
..."Using motion-tracking, gyroscope and accelerometer of a phone, or even audio, to control animation."
- Push modifier
..."Shifts surfaces by normals, used heavily in the preparation and construction of spline-cages."
- Python (programming)
..."A high-level language used by Blender and Radiant for scripting, automation and plugin functionality."
- Quad
..."Two planar triangles, or may refer to ngons, patches or spline-cells."
- Quadrify
..."Act of turning a triangular mesh into quads, by automatically merging pairs of triangles."
- Quantise
..."To refine into equal sequential parts, to use less values and data, more heavily rounded, for the sake of simplification and efficiency."
- Quiltwork
..."Contiguous mosaics of Editable Patches while directly surfaced atop spline-cells."
- Radiant
..."A family of programs for mapping - NetRadiant, GtkRadiant, DarkRadiant, Q4Radiant, Q3Radiant, QERadiant, originally for Quake."
- Radiosity
..."The ability for lights and surfaces to actually propagate calculated rays of light and bounce between all other surfaces."
- Ragdoll
..."Any physics object that has multiple discrete masses and is bound together by a skeleton and its articulated figure."
- Raytrace
..."Calculated per-pixel from a vector drawn between 2 points and gathered from the actual 3D environment, and not just as a texture."
- Realtime (rendering)
..."Frames drawn to the screen fast enough to allow for interactivity and gameplay, usually 30 or more times per second."
- Recipe
..."List of detailed steps to walkthrough development processes."
- Refactor
..."To make different in a purely technical sense without changing structure or appearance."
- Relax (models)
..."A method to smooth the vertices of 3D models."
- Relax modifier
..."Smoothes surfaces, used heavily to refine spline-cages and using the tubbing technique."
- Remeshing
..."To refactor the actual geometric surface of a 3D model for a cleaner result, while not necessarily changing the shape."
- Render
..."The final visual output to a frame of everything in a scene."
- Repository
..."An online database of files where developers can upload and download the latest up-to-date content shared among everyone."
- Resolution
..."The amount of pixels an image is created with."
- Resolve
..."The exact way in which a parametric abstract object becomes a triangulated exportable mesh."
- Respawn
..."When an entity re-enters the game world in a predetermined location, usually a character or collectible."
- Rigging
..."The entire process of binding a skeleton to a model."
- Rigid (geometry)
..."Objects that are not intended to and not able to be deformed or animated except for as a whole object."
- Roughness
..."The property of a material to blur and dampen its reflections, or the texture that controls this."
- SDK
..."Software Development Kit - which includes the IDE, all tools and extra content in the base project."
- Sampling
..."How much information is gathered from a scene, its contents and/or a final render to provide for quality accurate results."
- Sawtooth
..."An artifact of rows and columns of pixels not able to be texelised properly along a grain, whether in UVs or as displacements."
- Scalability
..."The virtue of being easily adjusted to be appropriate for different uses, especially concerning polycounts and cost to performance."
- Scatter (mapping)
..."A technique used to litter and propagate details all over a surface or area, such as grass models all over a terrain mesh."
- Scene
..."Everything that can possibly be rendered from any possible viewpoint at any possible time, and its metrics concerning performance."
- Scene-Node
..."An entity in a geographical location that determines fog, light, camera, sky and other omnipresent ambient elements."
- Screen-Space
..."Where elements of graphics not truly in any part of the 3D world reside, existing only in the frame-buffer, such as the GUI."
- Script
..."Like a text-based human-readable program or batch-file that usually automates a sequence of processes and events."
- Scroll
..."A material transform that causes a texture to move smoothly along its axes, for material-based effects like flowing liquids."
- Scroll-Round
..."A material transform that causes a texture to snap abruptly along its axes in increments, used for spritesheets."
- Sculpt
..."Deformation of highly-tessellated geometry in real-time using tools like textured brushes, for final touch-ups on maximum details."
- Seamless (textures)
..."An image whose edges transition through to its opposing edges so it can be tiled as a texture."
- Seams
..."Artifact of geometry causing infinitely sharp edges and unnatural transitions between textures, especially between 2 lightmaps."
- Sector
..."A confined geographical area of a map compartmentalised to allow LOD and its stages to cycle in an evenly dispersed way."
- Seed
..."A phase value that governs a random set of parameters that also remains unique and reproducible."
- Selection-Set
..."A saved set of selections, selected elements such as vertices, faces, brushes and entities, able to be reinstated at any time."
- Semitransparent / Translucent
..."When a material is 'half-invisible' or 'see-through' and requiring certain shader methods to be so."
- Sequential
..."In a logical direct order, one after the next."
- Serialise
..."To turn original sensibly titled filenames and headers into terse categorised numbers in an attempt to make content more efficient."
- Sewing (UVs)
..."The skill of quickly breaking, massaging and rewelding vertices in a UV unwrap for the perfect texture-mapping of models."
- Shader
..."The programmed method for how a texture is used in a material and its capabilities."
- ShaderCache
..."A compiled version of material scripts that are more GPU-friendly and more efficient to load quicker."
- Shaderlist
..."A list of materials used by a particular map so they engine doesn't try to load the entire base."
- Shading
..."The way a model is smoothed, illuminated and visually output to a render, and its reaction to different types of lighting."
- Sheathe
..."To hide geometry inside other geometry in real-time, usually a door."
- Shininess
..."Refers explicitly to the attenuation of specularity."
- Showtris
..."A legacy idTech console command that draws a real-time engine render in wireframe, or any equivalent thereof."
- Shrinkwrap
..."A technique for conforming the vertices of one mesh to another."
- Silhouette-Bleeding
..."A process for textures that ensures pixels are exceeding the bounds of their unwrap islands and UVs are seamless."
- Singularity
..."A problematic dense convergence of edges to a single point, one final or central vertex."
- Skeleton / Armature
..."A wireframe made of bones that is animated and which vertices of a mesh are bound to, which then also animates."
- Skybox
..."A giant cube with 6 images of a panoramic scene for each side, used for quick cheap skies or part of a skyportal."
- Skydome
..."A giant hemispherical mesh used to house layers of clouds used as part of a skyportal."
- Skyportal
..."A portaled view that links to an arrangement of models, effects, skydomes and skybox for a full-fledged dynamic sky environment."
- Sleave
..."Geometry that instantly encapsulates a structure like a building, blending behind its windows and doors, to portalise its interior."
- Slice
..."The side of a cylindrical object, that component and how it relates to the overall definition and polycount of the geometry."
- Slick (mapping)
..."A cubic volume placed in Radiant by a mapper that causes the player to slip and slide with momentum in-game."
- Sludge (mapping)
..."A cubic volume placed in Radiant by a mapper that causes the player to move slower and jump lower in-game."
- Smoothing
..."Whether a triangle's shading flows into a neighbouring triangle, a member of another group, or is a unique face unto itself."
- Smoothing-Group
..."Ordered grouping that governs the smoothing factors of each triangle in the mesh of 3D model."
- Snag (mapping)
..."Geometry that protrudes from surfaces in such a way as to become irritating to gameplay, and needs some clip."
- Snap
..."Instantly transforming to grids, angles or steps, or instantly visually changing in an unpleasant and unintended way."
- Softbody
..."A non-rigid mesh with special properties and able to be deformed by physics collisions."
- Softlock
..."When the player is trapped in an environment or an unwinnable situation and can not progress, due to design flaws."
- Soft-selection
..."A method of selecting elements differently by a colour-coded strength, and apply modifiers and their effects to different degrees based on how soft the selection is."
- Source (content)
..."Original uncompressed assets only used for development and not for distribution unless exported and compressed."
- Sparklie / Twinklie
..."Pixel artifacts caused by unwelded vertices and their edges not able to be perfectly aligned."
- Spatial
..."That of space, usually referring to explicit world-space where a unique object itself resides."
- Spatial-grid
..."The smallest comparative grid density which all vertices should be aligned to."
- Spatial-separation
..."To translate and move disparate elements by logical spatial world space, for the sake of easier editing and applying different methods and technique unto."
- Spawn
..."When an entity enters or re-enters the game world in predetermined locations, usually a character or collectible."
- Specularity
..."A shader pass in a material that accounts for its reaction to light and its 'shininess'."
- Spheremap
..."A single image containing an entire static environment, for reflections and skies, that can be used interchangeably with cubemaps."
- Spherify
..."A modifier vital to creating LOD stages for existing models, able to make arbitrarily-selected vertices become perfectly round."
- Splay
..."To lay flat and spread out, exactly as with the Origami technique or certain frilling."
- Spline
..."A high-level modelling element, like an edge, but with freeform bezier control over its own iterative curvature, used for perfect LOD."
- Spline-cage
..."A completed complex shape made entirely of splines, just as a completed mesh would be made entirely of triangles."
- Spline-cell
..."A 3-or-4-sided enclosed shape made of splines, becoming very much like an editable patch-mesh, making up a spline-cage."
- Sprite
..."An image displayed not as an intended physical form in a game world, but moreso for an effect or for information, GUI, HUD, etc."
- Spritesheet
..."Like an atlas but for particles and other effects that require animated video footage frames to be scroll-rounded."
- Stack (modelling)
..."The lengthwise sections of a cylindrical mesh, usually redundant and requiring extra attention to optimise."
- Stack (modifier)
..."Where all modifiers live, atop one another in an order that determines the sum of how they affect their target."
- Stacking (geometry)
..."Creating extra geometry atop a surface using extrusions, for the sake of frilling."
- Stairstep
..."An artifact occurring when colour-depth of a displacement is not enough for a smooth result on its target geometry."
- Static
..."Something that does not move, animate, change its material or colour information or almost any other behaviour in real-time."
- Step (mapping)
..."The maximum measured height over which the player can traverse without needing to jump."
- Stocktake
..."The procedure of making sure the base has everything it needs, nothing it does not, and all content is correct."
- Strafe
..."To move sideways without turning, maintaining a head-on viewing angle."
- Stream
..."Loading in while in-game from outside of memory on the hard-drive, which is slower but also unavoidable."
- String (programming)
..."Referring explicitly to value interpreted as purely human-readable text and not mathematical, even only numbers."
- Stutter
..."When a framerate is not consistent, for various reasons."
- Subdivision
..."The iteration of a tessellation, meshsmooth, HSDS or any adjustment to the density of a geometric matrix."
- Subgrid
..."Existing using coordinates smaller than the smallest potential spatial grid."
- Submesh / Subobject
..."A mesh component that is part of a whole model, separated by its contiguous form, material or rigging."
- Subpixel
..."Existing beyond the resolve of the current frame's resolution, not directly visible although still impacting the final result."
- Surface/Surfacing
..."Any step bringing a model closer to becoming finally renderable, especially from splines. The name of a modifier that does this."
- Symmetrical (geometry)
..."Mirrored into equal opposing parts and able to share UVs with itself to be twice as efficient."
- Table (scripting)
..."An array of embedded specific values in a looping sequence, usually used for material transform animations."
- Tangent
..."The sum of 2 or more normals of connecting triangles in the same smoothing-group, and how it affects shading."
- Terrain
..."Large-scale 3D geometry that represents organic forms like mountains and valleys."
- Terrain-Decorating
..."The part of the workflow that deals with featuremaps and scattering mapobjects."
- Terrain-Tile
..."A series of meshes specifically for extreme LOD ranges to be displaced by a heightmap and used in organic outdoor environments."
- Tessellation / Meshsmoothing
..."When 3D geometry is forced to be constructed of more or less triangles artificially."
- Texel
..."The pixel of an image, as used in a texture and displayed in a 3D viewport with texture-filtering."
- Texel-Scale
..."A universal set of values that govern how many texels belong within how many units in 3D world-space, on average."
- Texelation
..."The property of a texel's apparent resolution, scale and texture-mapping, and its perceived clarity and quality."
- Texture
..."An image used as part of a material or otherwise unto a 3D model."
- Texture-Buffer
..."Where all image data is stored and ready to be called into the scene as textures, and which relies on available V-RAM."
- Texture-Coordinates
..."Explicit mathematical texture-mapping coordinates not necessarily part of a UV unwrap. More for environments."
- Texture-Mapping
..."UV and unwrapping, but referring to the broader scope that includes methods for development moreso than production."
- Texture-Memory / V-RAM
..."The memory used by the engine that governs the maximum resolutions and amounts of all image data."
- Texture-Space
..."Anything concerning a single texture and how it behaves as a single shader or transform in a material."
- Tick / Tic
..."Like a framerate for game code, how many times per second certain game logic is calculated, what and when."
- Tiling (textures)
..."How an image mosiacs itself when mapped to geometry, if it's seamless and its carpeting effect."
- Timescale
..."A console command that adjusts the timing of the engine, to slow everything down or speed everything up."
- Topology
..."The consistency, cleanliness, and concision of a geometric mesh and how it supports the physical form it intends to."
- Tourney
..."A 2-player 1-vs-1 deathmatch and a map appropriately sized for this."
- Transform (material)
..."An engine method for animating texture passes in a material, such as scrolling and rotation."
- Transform-Matrix
..."A mathematical set of values that determines location, rotation and scale interrelations of a 3D object as a single array."
- Translate (programming)
..."Using data-management to such an extent as to transform one file into a completely different file format."
- Transplant (UVs)
..."Loading UV coordinates from one object to another despite being made of different elements."
- Triangulate
..."A step in the collapse process where triangles begin to be considered as it gets closer to being exported to the engine for use."
- Trigger / Region
..."A cubic bound placed into a map that activates game code based on interaction with an entity, such as the player."
- Trim (mapping)
..."Any thin repeating textured geometry that uses a 'trim' material, which is also long and thin. Common decoration for maps."
- Triplet (textures)
..."Legacy-material texture-sets that only include DiffuseMap, NormalMap and SpecularMap, ala idTech4."
- Tubbing
..."Interactive real-time selective refinement of relaxation and curvature of extremely low-poly meshes in real-time by its unique elements."
- Twinklie / Sparklie
..."Pixel artifacts caused by unwelded vertices and their edges not able to be perfectly aligned."
- UV channel / Unwrap channel
..."One of multiple channels for storing UV unwraps in a model."
- UVs
..."Coordinates of the geometry's texture-mapping that unwraps to map a 2D texture to a 3D model."
- Undercurve / Incurve
..."A curve whose knee is late and falloff is quick."
- Unwrap
..."The process and particular outcome of preparing UVs to map a 2D texture to a 3D model."
- Util
..."Shorthand for 'Utility', any tiny software not a program unto itself."
- V-Weps
..."A weapon model as rendered from the player's viewport, a much higher-detailed version factored specifically for this view."
- Value
..."Numbers or text belonging to a setting/function/key/etc that is its definition, the answer to a question."
- Vector
..."A mathematical axial angle and length, calculated between 2 coordinates, used for things like bezier control points of spline-cage knots."
- Vector-Desplicing
..."A technique used to derive vivisectioned splices from a bumpmap in an attempt to create a useable 3D mesh from it."
- Verbose
..."Information, complete and in text form, for analytics and debugging."
- Vertex / Vertices
..."The points joining the edges of the triangles used by 3D geometry."
- Vertex-Buffer
..."Memory dedicated to storing all geometric data ready to be called into the render anytime in real-time."
- Vertex-Colour
..."The colour information embedded in 3D model data that designates a colour to each vertex, used for material-blending."
- Vertex-Order
..."The order of vertices as they are sequenced in model data and its relevance to certain calculations and development processes."
- Vertex-Paint
..."The technique of manually painting colour onto vertices."
- Vertex-Texture / Vertexture
..."The technique of using an image's colour information to bake vertex colours via unwrapping."
- Verticality
..."How vertical the map design is and player traversal will be."
- Viewpoint
..."Exact coordinates in world-space from which a viewport is rendering."
- Viewport
..."The dimensions, framing and field of view drawn to the frame-buffer from a viewpoint, which renders everything in the scene."
- Viewport-Clipping
..."The minimum and maximum range that anything can exist within a scene's depth-buffer and thus be rendered or not."
- Vis
..."Visibility, particularly the viewpoint of the player to another geographical area and how it should be portalised."
- Void
..."Outside of the bounds of the entire environment where nothing local is being rendered, where the player is never intended to be."
- Volumetric
..."Anything considered as a volume using procedurally generated assets within, and not an asset pretending to be a volume."
- Walk (editing)
..."To make selections or other edits in a logical sequence, along connected components or elements neighbouring each other."
- Warping (UVs)
..."Intentional stretching and otherwise conventionally incorrect unwrapping, used to form a grain and optimise real-estate."
- Weight (vertex)
..."A value assigned to mesh's vertices to determine the strength of the movement effect of the bone it's attached to."
- Weld (vertex)
..."When 2 or more vertices sharing the same coordinates become 1 single vertex, to become more efficient and for better shading."
- Wind
..."A global value in an environment that causes a swaying motion on surfaces with compatible materials, used to simulate a breeze."
- Winding
..."The clockwise or counter-clockwise nature of how a triangle's vertices are ordered, determining the normal of the face."
- Wireframe / X-Ray
..."When viewing a 3D mesh without any surface, for the sake of easier editing."
- World-Space
..."Anything positioned by global coordinates from the absolute origin."
- Worldspawn
..."The fundamental base which determines absolute origin and every possible asset that can exist to be used and rendered."
- Z-Fight
..."When 2 or more surfaces are quantised down the depth-buffer so much and then share the same world-space and artifact rapidly."
- Zag-Cap
..."The cap of a cylindrical mesh that has no central vertex and the topology is zig-zagging across the surface."
- Zone
..."Geographical area of a map designated to be culled by specific region-bounds determined by a mapper, depending on portals."
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