This page gathers the 256 dictionary entries belonging to the domain “Computer graphics”, as labelled by Wiktionary. Each word leads to its full entry: definitions, etymology, pronunciation, examples. Page 1 of 3: from “2.5D” to “impostor”.
- 2.5D adj Halfway between two-dimensional and three-dimensional; typically limited to a two-dimensional plane with only limited access to the third…
- 8-bit adj Originating from or resembling the art or music of the 8-bit computer era.
- aa noun Initialism of antialiasing.
- adaptive tile refresh noun A sidescrolling technique for video games, making unusual use of the EGA graphics hardware to minimize redrawing.
- addressability noun The capability of a display surface or storage device to accommodate a specified number of uniquely identifiable points.
- aerial noun A highly-contrasting visual artifact in the form of a band or ring.
- alpha noun The level of translucency of a color, as determined by the alpha channel.
- alpha layer noun An additional channel in a digital image or layer that stores transparency information for each pixel.
- ambiance noun Of a three-dimensional model, a secondary color of a polygon that becomes more pronounced with shading.
- antialias verb To smooth using antialiasing.
- antialiasing noun any technique that reduces the appearance of jagged edges in digital images caused by high-contrast borders between pixels.
- antiportal noun A defined plane or volume that can never be seen through, and which thus reduces the number of calculations involved in rendering a…
- antishadow noun An inaccurate shadow in a three-dimensional rendering, caused by a vertex of an object being projected through the point of a light source.
- armature noun A kinematic chain (a system of bones or rigid bodies connected by joints) that is used to pose and deform models, often character models.
- atlas noun An image or texture containing a number of other images or textures, so as to reduce the cost of loading them separately.
- attribute noun A numeric value representing the colours of part of the screen display.
- back buffer noun A buffer used to store graphics while they are being drawn, and later copied to the display in a single operation.
- backface noun The back side of a face of a mesh, which typically will never face the camera and can thus be culled (discarded) from the list of items to…
- bake verb To fix (lighting, reflections, etc.) as part of the texture of an object to improve rendering performance.
- Bézier curve noun A type of parametric curve defined by a set of control points, two of which are the ends of the curve, while the others determine its shape.
- bilevel noun A binary image, one that has only two possible values for each pixel (usually black and white).
- billboard noun A sprite that always faces the screen, no matter which direction it is viewed from.
- billboarded adj Displayed using the billboarding technique.
- billboarding noun A technique in three-dimensional graphics in which a sprite is rendered perpendicular to the camera without respect to camera movement.
- bindful adj Having the limitation of requiring textures to be bound by the CPU to a particular slot in a fixed-size table before the GPU can use them.
- bindless adj Not having the limitation of requiring textures to be bound by the CPU to a particular slot in a fixed-size table before the GPU can use…
- binning noun The process of downscaling a digital image (or any array) by combining blocks of adjacent elements by taking the sum, average, median…
- blit noun A logical operation in which a block of data is rapidly moved or copied in memory, most commonly used to animate two-dimensional graphics.
- blorph noun A visual effects technique in which an entire setting morphs from one appearance into another (as opposed to the morphing of an object or…
- bob noun A graphical element, resembling a hardware sprite, that can be blitted around the screen in large numbers.
- brush noun An on-screen tool for "painting" a particular colour or texture.
- bucket rendering noun The rendering of a graphical scene in a number of portions ("buckets") that can be assigned to different processors to take advantage of…
- bump mapping noun A technique where a perturbation to the surface normal of the object being rendered is applied to each pixel, based on a texture map, prior…
- bundle adjustment noun A process used in the reconstruction of a three-dimensional model from a set of photographs, simultaneously refining the coordinates…
- buttery adj Ellipsis of buttery smooth.
- buttery smooth adj Having a high refresh rate so that the subjective experience does not include flickers or pauses as the video changes frames.
- calligraphic projection noun A system for displaying or projecting an image composed of a beam of light or electrons directly tracing the image, as opposed to sweeping…
- calligraphics noun The use of calligraphic projection.
- camera noun The viewpoint in a three-dimensional game or simulation.
- Canny edge detector noun An operator that uses a multistage algorithm, involving the calculus of variations, to detect the edges in an image.
- canvas noun A region on which graphics can be rendered.
- caustic noun The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object.
- cel shading noun A style of non-photorealistic rendering suggesting the flat, hand-drawn appearance of a comic or cartoon.
- checkerboard rendering noun A rasterization optimization technique where on every pass only a part of the final resolution is rendered (sometimes in a checkerboard…
- clip verb To discard (an occluded part of a model or scene) rather than waste resources on rendering it.
- clipping noun The use of a mask to hide part of an object or image.
- compositor noun A system that puts images together in a buffer (such as individual windows on a desktop) to generate a final display image.
- control point noun Any of a series of points defining the shape of a curve, etc.
- Cornell box noun A physical box with variously coloured walls and an inner light source, photographed and used to gauge the accuracy of a computer rendering…
- cube map noun A panorama consisting of six textures projected onto the sides of a cube that is usually centred on the camera or viewpoint.
- cull verb To selectively not render or process certain objects, such as polygons.
- cutaway adj Having selected portions of the outside removed so as to give an impression of the interior.
- dead pixel noun a miscolored pixel on an image where it is otherwise not intended to be.
- decal noun A texture overlaid on another texture to provide extra details.
- decimate verb To replace (a high-resolution model) with another of lower but acceptable quality. (Usually algorithmically)
- deep color noun Graphics with 30 or more bits of storage per pixel, allowing for billions of distinct colors.
- Delaunay triangulation noun For a given set P of discrete points in a plane: a triangulation DT(P) such that no point in P is inside the circumcircle of any triangle…
- di noun Initialism of diffused illumination.
- displacement mapping noun A method for adding detail to surfaces by subdivision and displacement of the resulting vertices from a heightmap.
- distance fog noun A gradient that progressively obscures objects as they get further from the camera, typically used to avoid the processing overhead of…
- distributed ray tracing noun A form of ray tracing that averages a number of rays across an interval, allowing for the rendering of soft or blurry phenomena.
- dither verb To use dot patterns in an image or graphic to simulate colors or shades not in the system palette.
- dithered adj Produced by dithering; consisting of bits in different colors placed side by side to simulate an intermediate color that is not in the…
- DTP noun Initialism of desktop publishing.
- edge loop noun A set of connected edges across a surface, with the last edge usually meeting the first edge to form a loop.
- effect noun An illusion produced by technical means (as in "special effect")
- error diffusion noun A form of halftoning in which the quantization residual is distributed to neighbouring pixels that have not yet been processed.
- fader noun A program or algorithm for fading out colors.
- feather verb To intergrade or blend the pixels of an image with those of a background or neighboring image.
- fillrate noun A measurement of the number of pixels a video card can render in a certain time period.
- filmstrip noun A file containing a sequence of images or video frames.
- flatten verb To combine (separate layers) into a single image.
- flood fill noun A means of filling a discrete area with colour, based on colouring every pixel that can be recursively reached from a starting point.
- flyaround noun The animated passage of the camera around a model, to show it from different angles.
- flyby noun A three-dimensional animated sequence in which the camera moves past an object or scenery.
- fog noun Distance fog.
- formfactor noun The ratio of energy radiating out from one patch to the energy absorbed by another patch, used in the calculation of radiosity.
- forward rendering noun A traditional three-dimensional rendering pipeline that sorts light sources applicable to models in world space prior to rasterization.
- frame rate noun The measurement of how quickly an imaging device can produce unique consecutive images called frames, most often expressed in frames per…
- G-buffer noun A screen space representation of geometry and material information, generated by an intermediate rendering pass in deferred shading…
- gamma noun Synonym of gamma correction.
- gamma correction noun A nonlinear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems.
- geometric pen noun A configurable drawing tool for creating lines that has a width specified in logical units, as opposed to device units (pixels), and…
- geometry shader noun A type of shader that can process three-dimensional model geometry, for example by turning one primitive into another.
- gi noun Initialism of global illumination.
- glenzing noun A technique for simulating translucency by storing extra colour values in the palette that represent the combined colours of intersecting…
- global illumination noun The realistic lighting of a rendered scene by means of algorithms that take into account not only the direct illumination from light…
- Gouraud shading noun A method of simulating the effects of light and colour across the surface of an object, based on estimates of the surface normal of each…
- graymap noun A grayscale bitmap.
- guard band noun A virtual area of the screen, bordering the real screen, to which any rendering is ignored, used to simplify clipping.
- headtracking noun A technique that tracks the movements of the user's head and adjusts the view of a three-dimensional model accordingly, allowing them to…
- heightmap noun A two-dimensional raster image used to store surface elevations that can later be applied to a three-dimensional object.
- high color noun graphics with two bytes of storage per pixel, allowing for up to 65536 different colors
- hillshade noun A graphical representation of a surface as if illuminated from one side
- hit point noun In ray tracing, the point in a scene at which a ray strikes an object.
- hitbox noun An invisible shape bounding all or part of a model (in a video game, etc.) used in collision detection to determine whether another object…
- hogel noun A small portion of a computer-generated light-field hologram, representing the direction and intensity of light rays from many perspectives.
- hypertexture noun A realistic simulated surface texture produced by adding small distortions across the surface of an object.
- immediate mode noun A mode in which the application is directly responsible for rendering graphics to the display, contrasting with retained mode.
- impostor noun A sprite or animation integrated into a three-dimensional scene to look like part of the 3D world.