Modeler

GlossaryxixVertex Normal — Even though it is a single point in threedimensional space, its normal can be calculated based onthe normal of the face they are describing. The three vertexnormals of a single triangle without any neighboring trianglesare set to be the same as the polygon’s normal. For trianglessurrounded by other triangles, the vertex normals are theaverage of the surrounding face normals.View Frustum — Representing the field of view of the camera,the view frustum is a pyramid volume with the top shearedoff. The top of the pyramid represents the viewport of thecamera (usually the screen), and is often called the near (orhither) plane, while the bottom is called the far (or yon) plane.View Frustum Culling — Removing faces that lie outside theobserver’s view. Only the face that is within the view frustumis kept for rendering — speeding up rendering time andhelping to maintain a high framerate.Viewport — Window area displaying orthogonal or perspectiveprojection in a 3D application. The screen can either containone big viewport or several smaller, tiled viewports. Bysimultaneously using several viewports displaying a threedimensionalobject from different sides (e.g. top, front, left,perspective), modeling in a virtual 3D environment is madepossible.VIPER — Versatile Interactive Preview Render. A window thatprovides you with an interactive previewing system.X-Axis — Usually is the axis that is left-right/side-side.Yaw — To turn about the vertical axis, also known as heading.Y-Axis — Usually is the axis that is up-down/top-bottom.Y-up — Coordinate system with the Y-axis pointing upwards.Z-Axis — Usually is the axis that is in-out/front-back.Z-Buffer — Also called depth buffer, the z-buffer is a twodimensionalmatrix of 16 or 32-bit integers with the samedimensions as the screen (or viewport). Whenever apolygon is drawn to the screen, the rasteriser checks thecorresponding z-buffer value for each screen coordinateand skips drawing the current pixel if the z value is markedas being closer. This allows for some nice effects suchas overlapping 3D models, and completely solves therendering-order problem.However, this comes at the price of slower performance andgreater memory usage, two factors that have become moreor less moot with the proliferation of modern 3D acceleratorsthat tend to support z-buffers in hardware.Z-Up — Coordinate system with the Z-axis pointing upwards.Volume — When selecting, a volume of an object is a 3Drepresentation of the area to be edited. When editing, all ofthe parts of objects contained within this 3D selection can beedited without changing what lies outside of the selection.Volumetric Fog — Fog that, opposed to ordinary fog, is restrictedto fit within a containing volume.Volumetric Light — Light simulating illumination of particles floatingin mid-air, thereby making the light cone itself visible.Vortex — A tool that rotates an object more in the center than inthe outer edge. This tool can be easily related to a tornado,where the wind in the center moves faster than the wind inthe outer part of the cone.Voxel — Short for VOlume ELement, this term refers to a specificrendering technique common in medical visualisation as wellas some interactive media. In essence, a voxel is a threedimensionalpixel, that is, a cube, with a specific color.Weights — The strength of influence on a particular vertex of anassigned deformer, such as a bone. See V Maps.Weld — This command takes the selected points and combinesthem into one point, a single point that is specified by the lastpoint that is selected.WIP — Short for Work In Progress.Wireframe — A way of visualising geometry by drawing linesbetween its vertices but not shading the surfaces within.World Coordinate System — The coordinate system, normally inthree dimensions, used to describe the location in space of aspecific point called vertex.