Alpha

The optional fourth channel in an RGB image file, typically used for compositing.

Ambient Light

A light that equally affects all portions of all objects in a rendering scene.

Ambient Light Reflection

A property of the surface that determines how much light from an ambient light source is reflected off the surface, regardless of the position or angle of any light source.

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is a shading method that simulates effect of light radiating from a real model by darkening the occluded areas.

Anti-Aliasing

Method to smooth the jagged appearance of diagonal lines and edges in a bitmapped image.

Appearance

A set of attributes that determine the appearance of a surface. These attributes include color, reflecting ability, transparency, texture, and so on.

Appearance Sphere

The sphere that is contained in the appearance editor that displays the current appearance properties.

Background

The environment, other than the room, in which the model is rendered.

Brightness

The property of an appearance that determines its intensity after the hue is chosen.

Bump Map

A one-channel texture map that creates the illusion of surface roughness.

Bump Height

The height or depression of the bump map features.

Caustics

Light patterns created by reflection or refraction of light striking a reflective or refractive surface. A caustic effect may be seen when light reflects or refracts through some reflective or refractive material, to create a more focused, stronger light on the final location. For example, the light falling on a glass filled with a fluid forms patterns of different intensity behind the glass and on surrounding surfaces.

cm2 Factor

A multiplier that is applied to scale the rendered pixel values to screen pixels.

Color

The surface color of a lighted model.

Color Blender

A part of the color editor that provides a continuous range of colors. Blends colors between the four color chips of the blender.

Color Box

A part of the color editor that allows you to define colors along two axes based on red, green, and blue values of colors.

Color Palette

A part of the color editor that provides an array of colors.

Color Temperature

Color Temperature is a property that indicates the hue of a specific type of light source.

Color Texture

A three-channel texture map that consists of red, green, and blue values.

Color Wheel

A part of the color editor that allows you to select colors based on hue, saturation, and brightness.

Decal

A four-channel texture map that consists of a standard color texture map and a transparency (or alpha) channel.

Decal Intensity

The intensity of the decal map.

Depth of Field

The distance between the closest and the farthest points from a camera that are in sharp focus. The smaller the aperture (the larger the f-stop number), the more objects are in focus, both near and distant. The wider the aperture (the smaller the f-stop number), elements in front of and behind the object in focus appear soft or blurry.

Effects

Additional special effects like reflection settings, background, tone mappings, and depth of field that can be applied to the final rendered scene.

Environment Light

High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) Light that uses the image pixels for lighting a scene.

Film ISO

A rating of the film's sensitivity to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive or faster the film; the lower the number, the less sensitive or slower the film.

With faster films, that have higher Film ISO number, the resulting image does not become overexposed or too bright. This setting can be used in low light conditions. Low numbered film speed is less sensitive to light and needs more time to absorb enough light to make an image that is not underexposed or too dark. This setting can be used for bright light conditions or outdoor environment.

Final Gathering

Method of simulating diffuse reflections to get realistic results when rendering. Diffuse reflections are effects of the reflected light that bounces off diffuse surfaces. Final Gathering calculates the light from direct and indirect illumination. Direct illumination is the light from (active) light sources, such as a point light and directional light. Indirect illumination is the reflected light from other surfaces or the environment. To calculate the light, Final Gathering uses the color value from the surrounding surfaces and the background. It can use the environment or a surface as light source and does not require active lights.

F Number

A number that indicates the size of the aperture opening in a camera lens such as f/1.4, f/4, f/5.6, f/16, and f/22. The f-number setting determines how much light is allowed to enter the lens and pass through to the film or the sensor. It also determines the depth of field, or how much in front of and behind the subject is in focus.

Gamma

An inherently nonlinear reproduction of intensity by a display device (monitor).

Global Illumination

Method to calculate the effect of light bouncing off other surfaces. Global Illumination calculates the light from direct and indirect illumination. It uses photons emitted by light sources to calculate the lighting in a scene. A photon is a particle that contains light color and intensity information. Photons emanate from the light source. When these photons strike a surface, some stick and others are reflected or refracted. These reflected and refracted photons illuminate other surfaces.

Graphics Library

A collection of textures, appearances, rooms, and lights that are stored together on disk for convenient access when assigning parts of a scene.

Highlight Color

The color of the highlight that is reflected from the model.

Highlight Shine

The sharpness or spread of the highlight; the smaller the highlight, the shinier the surface.

Highlight Intensity

The brightness of the highlight.

Hue, Saturation, Brightness

A way of defining a color based on a color wheel, similar to mixing colors by adding black and white to pure pigments. Hue measures the angle around the color wheel from 0 to 360 degrees. Red is at 0 degrees, green at 120 degrees, and blue at 240 degrees. Saturation indicates the intensity of the color from center of the color wheel to its edge. Brightness or Value is a range from black to white. Saturation and Brightness range from 0 to 100%.

Light

Necessary for all renderings, lights have position, color, and brightness. Some lights also have direction, spread, or concentration. The three types distant, lightbulb, and spotlight.

Lightbulb

A type of light where the illumination radiates from the center of the bulb. The effect of a lightbulb on a surface depends on the position of the light from the surface.

Mapping Types

The specification for how textures are to be mapped onto a surface. Available mapping methods are planar, cylindrical, spherical, and parametric.

Palette

A collection of rendering objects that are displayed together in an editor. Palettes are available for appearances, lights, and scenes.

Perspective View

Viewing the model the way our eye perceives 3D objects in the real world.

Physical Light

An option for Spotlight and Lightbulb type of light source that models physically correct light. For physically correct point lights, the light intensity falls off with the inverse square of the distance from the light source. Advanced rendering features such as Global Illumination and Caustics render realistic effect when physical light is used.

Pixel

A single dot of an image, displayed by the combination of three primary colors, red, green, and blue.

Ray Trace

An approach to generating more realistic images. Models are shaded by simulating the inter-reflection of rays of light between objects in a scene. Rays are "traced" from the light through the scene to the eyepoint.

Reflect Room

A rendering option that controls the reflection of the room on the model.

Reflection

The degree to which a model reflects its surroundings.

Reflection Depth

The number of times light is reflected from a surface. Increasing depth increases the time to render.

Refraction

The degree to which light bends as it passes through a material.

Refraction Depth

The number of times light is refracted from a surface. Increasing depth increases the time to render.

Render Window

Generates a photorealistic image of the model.

Render Quality

A rendering option that controls the surface-rendering quality in a model.

Render Room

A rendering option that switches the display of the room during a rendering.

RGB

A color model where the primary colors red, green, and blue are combined in various ways to produce other colors. Levels of Red, Green, and Blue can each range from 0 to 100% of full intensity. Each level is represented by the range of decimal numbers from 0 to 255.

Room

The environment in which the model is rendered. A rectangular room has four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. A cylindrical room has one wall, a floor, and a ceiling. You can display the room with a grid pattern or apply textures to a room.

Scatter

Light scattering is an effect used to simulate atmospheric or volumetric scattering of light within a medium, for example a smoky room or a hazy atmosphere.

Scene

A collection of render settings applied to a model. These settings include lights, rooms, and environment effects.

Self Shadows

A rendering option that causes shadows from a model to be cast onto itself.

Shadow

An environment option that allows the ground effect of a shadow.

Sharpen Geometric Textures

A rendering option that renders geometric textures with more clarity.

Sharpen Textures at Angle

A rendering option that sharpens the image of textures that are rendered at a shallow angle to the view.

Shutter Speed

The duration for which the aperture will remain open. The longer the shutter stays open, the more light is let into the camera.

Spotlight

A type of light whose light rays are confined within a cone. The effect of spotlight on a surface depends on the light’s position from the surface.

Spot Angle

The diameter of a spotlight's circle of light.

Spot Focus

The sharpness of a spotlight's beam.

Supersampling

Supersampling is a method to calculate the color between a number of pixel samples. To obtain the required color, the reading of a number of pixel samples is taken and then an average of their values is calculated to get a better approximation.

Texture

An image that is used to determine the color or appearance of a surface.

Transparency

The degree to which you can see through a surface.

Watermark

A watermark refers to text or an image that appears over your rendered image. Watermarking can also be used as an authentication technique. A watermark is a unique identifier that is inserted to personalize the rendered image.