Glossary of computer graphics

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This is a glossary of terms relating to computer graphics.

For more general computer hardware terms, see glossary of computer hardware terms.

0–9

2D convolution

Operation that applies linear filtering to image with a given two-dimensional kernel, able to achieve e.g. edge detection, blurring, etc.

2D image

2D texture map

A

texture map with two dimensions, typically indexed by uv coordinates

.

2D vector

A

rasterization algorithms, 2D computer graphics, graphical user interface

libraries.

2.5D

Also pseudo 3D. Rendering whose result looks 3D while actually not being 3D or having great limitations, e.g. in camera degrees of freedom.

3D graphics pipeline

A

bitmap image

result.

3D paint tool

A

mudbox

, also sometimes able to modify vertex attributes.

3D scene

A collection of

lightsources in world space, into which a camera may be placed, describing a scene for 3D rendering

.

3D unit vector

A

3D space

.

4D vector

A common

SIMD

registers.

4×4 matrix

A

3D graphics pipelines.^[1]

7e3 format

A packed pixel format supported by some

exponent.^[2]

AABB

bounding volumes

.

Additive blending

A compositing operation where ${\displaystyle dst=dst+src,}$ without the use of an

linear dodge

in some applications.

Affine texture mapping

Linear interpolation of texture coordinates in screen space without taking perspective into account, causing texture distortion.

Aliasing

Unwanted effect arising when sampling high-frequency signals, in computer graphics appearing e.g. when downscaling images. Antialiasing methods can prevent it.

Alpha channel

An additional image channel (e.g. extending an RGB image) or standalone channel controlling

alpha blending

.

Ambient lighting

An approximation to the light entering a region from a wide range of directions, used to avoid needing an exact solution to the rendering equation.

Ambient occlusion (AO)

Effect approximating, in an inexpensive way, one aspect of global illumination by taking into account how much ambient light is blocked by nearby geometry, adding visual clues about the shape.^[3]: 446

Analytic model

A

Empirical models

based purely on recorded data.

Anisotropic filtering

Advanced texture filtering improving on

Mipmapping

, preventing aliasing while reducing blur in textured polygons at oblique angles to the camera.

Anti-aliasing

Methods for filtering and sampling to avoid

visual artefacts associated with the uniform pixel grid in 3D rendering

.

Array texture

A form of

texture coordinate; used to reduce state changes in 3D rendering.^[4]

Augmented reality

Computer-rendered content inserted into the user's view of the real world.^[3]: 917

AZDO

Approaching zero driver overhead, a set of techniques aimed at reducing the CPU overhead in preparing and submitting rendering commands in the OpenGL pipeline. A compromise between the traditional GL API and other high-performance low-level rendering APIs.^[5]

B

Back-face culling

Culling (discarding) of polygons that are facing backwards from the camera.

Baking

Performing an expensive calculation offline, and caching the results in a

normal maps, or low level of detail models.^[6]

Barycentric coordinates

Three-element coordinates of a point inside a triangle.

Beam tracing

Modification of ray tracing which instead of lines uses pyramid-shaped beams to address some of the shortcomings of traditional ray tracing, such as aliasing.^[7]

Bicubic interpolation

Extension of

cubic interpolation

to 2D, commonly used when scaling textures.

Bilinear interpolation

Linear interpolation extended to 2D, commonly used when scaling textures.

Binding

Selecting a resource (texture, buffer, etc.) to be referenced by future commands.

Billboard

A textured rectangle that keeps itself oriented towards the camera, typically used e.g. for vegetation or particle effects.^[3]: 551

Binary space partitioning (BSP)

A data structure that can be used to accelerate visibility determination, used e.g. in Doom engine.

Bit depth

The number of

bitmap image

(holding one or mode image channels, typical values being 4, 8, 16, 24, 32)

Bitmap

Image stored by pixels.

Bit plane

A format for

2D array; Several such parallel arrays combine to produce the a higher bit depth

image. Opposite of packed pixel format.

Blend operation

A render state controlling

pixels

.

Bone

Coordinate systems used to control surface deformation (via Weight maps) during

keyframes, and other procedural constraints

.

Bounding box

One of the simplest type of

extents

.

Bounding volume

A mathematically simple volume, such as a sphere or a box, containing 3D objects, used to simplify and accelerate spatial tests (e.g. for visibility or collisions).^[3]: 819

BRDF

empirical models defining 4D functions for surface shading indexed by a view vector and light vector relative to a surface.^[8]

Bump mapping

Technique similar to normal mapping that instead of normal maps uses so called bump maps (height maps).

BVH

Bounding volume hierarchy is a tree structure on a set of geometric objects.

C

Camera

A

virtual camera from which rendering

is performed, also sometimes referred to as 'eye'.

Camera space

A space with the

origin, aligned with the viewer's direction, after the application of the world transformation

and view transformation.

Cel shading

Cartoon-like shading effect.

Clipping

Limiting specific operations to a specific region, usually the view frustum.

Clip plane

A

View frustum

or be used for other effects.

Clip space

Coordinate space in which clipping is performed.

Clip window

A rectangular region in screen space, used during clipping. A clip window may be used to enclose a region around a portal in portal rendering.

CLUT

A table of RGB color values to be indexed by a lower

vector quantisation

.

Color bleeding

Unwanted effect in texture mapping. A color from a border of unmapped region of the texture may appear (bleed) in the mapped result due to interpolation.

Color channels

The set of

bitmap image

representing the visible color components, i.e. distinct from the alpha channel or other information.

Color resolution

Command buffer

A region of

bare metal programming, or managed by low level rendering APIs, or handled internally by high level rendering APIs

.

Command list

A group of rendering commands ready for submission to a graphics processing unit, see also Command buffer.

Compute API

An API for efficiently processing large amounts of data.^[9]

Compute shader

A compute kernel managed by a rendering API, with easy access to rendering resources.

Cone tracing

Modification of

antialiasing or soft shadows.^[10]

Connectivity information

Indices defining [rendering primitive]s between vertices, possibly held in index buffers. describes geometry as a graph or hypergraph.

CSG

solid models from boolean operations

combining simpler modelling primitives.

Cube mapping

A form of environment reflection mapping in which the environment is captured on a surface of a cube (cube map).

Culling

Before rendering begins, culling removes objects that don't significantly contribute to the rendered result (e.g. being obscured or outside camera view).^[3]: 830

D

Decal

A "sticker" picture applied onto a surface (e.g. a crack on the wall).^[3]: 888

Detail texture

Texture maps

repeated at high frequency combined with a main texture on a surface to prevent a blurred appearance close to the camera.

Deferred shading

A technique by which computation of shading is deferred to later stage by rendering in two passes, potentially increasing performance by not discarding expensively shaded pixels. The first pass only captures surface parameters (such as depth, normals and material parameters), the second one performs the actual shading and computes the final colors.^[3]: 884

Deformation lattice

A means of controlling

control points

moved to arbitrary positions, with polynomial interpolation of the space between them.

Degenerate triangles

Zero area triangle primitives placed in a triangle strip between actual primitives, to allow many parts of a triangle mesh to be rendered in a single drawcall. These are rejected by the triangle setup unit.^[11]

Delaunay triangulation

A method for generating an efficient triangulating between a set of

plane

.

Depth buffer

A

rasterization

of 3D scenes

Depth map

A

displacement map

, but usually associated with a projection.

Depth value

A value in a depth map representing a distance perpendicular to the space of an image.

Diffuse lighting

In shading, a diffuse component of light is the light reflected from the surface uniformly into all directions. This component depends on the surface normal and direction to the light source but not on the viewer's position.

Direct3D

Microsoft Windows 3D API, with similar architecture to OpenGL.

Displacement mapping

a method for adding detail to surfaces by

height map.^[12]

Distributed ray tracing

Modification of ray tracing that casts multiple rays through each pixel in order to model soft phenomena such as soft shadows, depth of field etc.

Double buffering

Using a dedicated buffer for rendering and copying the result to the screen buffer when finished. This prevents stutter on the screen and the user seeing rendering in progress.

Drawcall

A single rendering command submitted to a rendering API, referring to a single set of render states.

E

Edge vector

A vector between 2 position vertices in a polygon or polygon mesh, along an edge.

Environment mapping

Also reflection mapping, a technique of approximating reflections of environment on complex surfaces of 3D models in real time. A complete 360 degree view of environment needs to be prerendered and stored in a texture using a specific mapping (e.g. cube mapping, sphere mapping etc.)

Extents

The minimum and maximum values of an object or

coordinate axis

or set of axes.

F

Fixed-function pipeline

A hardware

fixed-function units

. A limited number of functions may be controlled by render states.

Fixed-function unit

A piece of hardware in a

shaders

.

Flat shading

Shading that assigns a uniform color to each face of a 3D model, giving it a "sharp-edge" look.

Forward rendering

A term for traditional

rasterization. Contrasts with Deferred shading

.

Forward-plus rendering

An extension of forward rendering using

lightsources, bypassing some of the disadvantages of deferred shading.^[13]

Fractal

A complex, self-similar shape described by a simple equation. Fractals can be used e.g. in procedural terrain generation.^{[citation needed]}

Fragment (pixel) shader

Shader processing individual pixels or fragments (values that may potentially become pixels).

Frustum culling

A stage in a

view frustum

, allowing trivial rejection.

Fresnel

According to Fresnel equations, surfaces show more specular reflections when viewed at near-grazing incidence. This effect is often simulated in computer graphics.

FXAA

An approximate

antialiasing method performed in a post-processing step which smooths the image in screen space, guided by edge detection (contrasting with the usual supersampling

approaches that require larger frame-buffers).

Geometry

Typically used to refer to

textures).^[3]

^: 47

Geometry shader

In APIs such as OpenGL and Direct3D, geometry shader is an optional stage able to process 3D model geometry in more advanced ways than a vertex or tessellation shaders (e.g. turn primitives into other primitives).

G-buffer

A screen space representation of geometry and

rendering pipelines.^[14]

Global illumination

Computing the global interactions of light within the scene, e.g. reflections of light from one object to another, by which realism is added.

Gouraud shading

Shading technique that computes values at triangle vertices and interpolates them across the surface. This is more realistic and computationally expensive than flat shading, and less than Phong shading.

Graphics processing unit

Hardware used to accelerate graphical computations.

Graphical shader

A

compute shader

.

Grid cell index

multidimensional array

.

H

HDR

post processing

.

Heightmap

A

texture map holding height values; typically used for defining landscapes, or for displacement mapping

Homogeneous coordinates

Coordinates of form (x,y,z,w) used during matrix transforms of vertices, allowing to perform non-linear transforms such as the

perspective transform

.

I

Image channel

A single component (referred to as a

alpha blending

Image format

A specific way of representing a

memory, also refers to image file formats

.

Image generation

Synonymous with

bitmap image

result.

Image generator

A

realtime rendering for simulation (e.g. Evans & Sutherland

ESIG line).

Image order rendering

Rendering methods that iterate over pixels of the screen in order to draw the image (e.g. raytracing).

Image plane

The plane in the world which is identified with the plane of the display monitor used to view the image that is being rendered.

Immediate mode rendering

The submission of rendering commands and rendering primitive data without the extensive use of managed resources; rendering primitive vertex attribute data may be embedded directly into a command list, rather than referenced

indirectly

from resources.

Impostor

A dynamically rendered

texture map used to stand in for geometry in the distance. A form of level of detail optimization.^[15]

Incremental error algorithm

A set of

rasterization algorithms which use simple integer arithmetic to update an error term that determines if another quantity is incremented, avoiding the need for expensive division or multiplication operations; e.g. bresenham's line algorithm, or rasterizing heightmap landscapes.^[16]

Index buffer

A rendering resource used to define rendering primitive connectivity information between vertices.

Indirect illumination

Another term for global illumination.

Instancing

Rendering multiple objects (instances) using the same geometry data.

Intersection test

Determining if two pieces of

3D modelling

applications.

K

K-DOP

A type of

planes

(e.g. diagonals formed by each pair of coordinate axes, etc.).

L

Level of detail (LOD)

If an object contributes less to the rendered result, e.g. by being far away from the camera, LOD chooses to use a simpler version of the object (e.g. with fewer polygons or textures).^[3]: 852

Light probe

Object used to capture light parameters at a specific point in space in order to help compute scene lighting.^[17]

Low level rendering API

A library providing a minimal

resource management, command buffers

, synchronisation issues.

Lighting

Computations simulating the behavior of light.

Light vector

In shading calculations, a

incident light

onto a model's surface.

Light field

A

3D model by ray tracing

.

Line primitive

A rendering primitive or modelling primitive representing a line segment, used for wireframes.

Lumels

A term for

texture map representing a lightmap

.

Manhattan distance

Measure of distance between two points, different from Euclidean distance, that sums the distances along principal axes.

Marching cubes

A method for triangulating implicit surfaces.

MegaTexturing

Texturing technique that works with extremely large textures which are not loaded into memory all at once, but rather streamed from the

hard disk depending on the camera view.^[18]

^: 176

Microtexture

An alternative term sometimes used for Detail textures.

Mipmap

Method of preventing aliasing by storing differently scaled versions of the same image and using the correct one during rendering.

Modelling primitive

Basic elements from which

3D models and 3D scenes are composed. Also known as a Geometric primitive

.

Model space

Coordinate system in which a 3D model is created and stored.

Model transformation matrix

A

3D model's local coordinates

.

Multiply blend

A

blending operation used for lightmaps

, ${\displaystyle dst=dst*src.}$

Near clipping

The clipping of 3D

rendering primitives against the near clip plane. Necessary to correctly display rendering primitives that partially pass behind the camera

.

Nearest-neighbor interpolation

Simplest form of interpolation that for given position outputs the color of the nearest sample.

Noise

In real world data a noise is an unwanted distortion of the captured signal, e.g. in photography. In rendering, artificial noise, such as white noise or Perlin noise, is often generated and added on purpose to add realism.

Normal mapping

Method of adding detail to the surface of 3D models, without increasing geometry complexity, by using a texture with precomputed normals that are used during shading.

O

OBJ format

A common 3D file format.

Object order rendering

Rendering methods that iterate over objects in the scene and draws then one by one (e.g.

rasterization

).

Occlusion culling

Culling (discarding) of objects before rendering that are completely obscured by other objects.

Occlusion query

A command passed to a

occlusion culling

.

Offline rendering

Non-real-time rendering.

OOBB

An

local coordinate system

OpenGL

Commonly used 2D and 3D graphics rendering API.

Outcode

A small

bitwise AND of all its vertices

outcodes is non zero

Packed pixel format

An

array of structures for bitmap data. Contrasts with planar image formats

.

Parallax mapping

Shader effect that adds detail with a sense of depth to a 3D surface, in a more realistic way than normal mapping.

Parameter gradient

The

rasterization, used for interpolation

across a rendering primitive surface.

Particle effect

Effects consisting of a number of particles that behave by certain rules, typically used to simulate fire, smoke etc.^[3]: 567

Path tracing

Photorealistic iterative rendering method based on tracing light paths.

Perspective correct texturing

Non-linear texture coordinate interpolation that takes into account perspective, eliminating distortion seen in affine texture mapping.

Phong lighting

A commonly used model of local illumination that computes the result as a sum of ambient, diffuse and specular elements of light.

Phong shading

Shading technique that uses interpolated normals.

Photogrammetry

Science and technology of making measurement from photographs, e.g. automatically creating 3D models of environment.

Photometry

Science of measuring light in terms of human perception.

Photon mapping

Photorealistic rendering algorithm based on tracing rays from the camera as well as light sources, able to simulate effects such as caustics.

Physically based rendering (PBR)

empirical models of surfaces.^[19]

Pixel

Smallest element of a raster image.

Planar image format

An

structure of arrays

for bitmap data.

Point cloud

A surface defined by a collection of vertices without connectivity information.^[20]

Point sprite

A rendering primitive in

particle systems

Polygon mesh

A

polygon primitives

.

Polygon primitive

A rendering or modelling primitive defining a flat surface connecting 3 or more vertices.

Portal

A means of

occlusion culling, defining a visible window between adjacent bounding volumes, used in portal rendering

.

Post processing

Effects applied to a

3D rendering pipeline, for example tone mapping, some approximations to motion blur, and blooms.^[21]

Predicated rendering

A feature facilitating

CPU

, where a group of rendering commands are flagged to be conditional on the result of an earlier occlusion query.

Premultiplied alpha

A variation of a

additive blending

effects

Primitive

A basic unit of geometry for rendering or modelling.

Procedural generation

Generating data, such as textures, 3D geometry or whole scenes by algorithms (as opposed to manually).

Procedural texture

A texture (very often a volume texture) generated procedurally by a mathematical function and with the use of noise functions.^[3]: 198

Q

Quaternion

A means of representing

rotations in a 4D vector, useful for skeletal animation, with advantages for interpolation compared to euler angles (i.e. not suffering from gimbal lock).^[22]

Radiometry

Measurement of electromagnetic radiation such as light, defining measures such as flux or radiance.^[23]: 469

Raster graphics

Graphics represented as a rectangular grid of pixels.

Rasterisation

Converting vector graphics to raster graphics. This terms also denotes a common method of rendering 3D models in real time.

Ray casting

Rendering by casting non-recursive rays from the camera into the scene. 2D ray casting is a 2.5D rendering method.

Ray marching

Sampling 3D space at multiple points along a ray, typically used when analytical methods cannot be used.^[24]: 157

Ray tracing

Recursively tracing paths of

light rays through a 3D scene, may be used for 3D rendering

(more commonly for offline rendering), or other tests.

Recursive subdivision

The process of

subdividing an object (either geometric object, or a data structure) recursively

until some criterion is met.

Render mapping

The

texture map to capture surface properties. Also known as 'render surface map'.^[25][26]

Render pass

A stage in a

rendering pipeline

generating some (possibly incomplete) representation of the scene.

Render states

Information controlling a graphics pipeline, composed of modes and parameters, including resource identifiers, and shader bindings.

Render target

A graphics resource into which

texture maps

.

Render to texture

The process of

render target

.

Rendering API

A

Vulkan, Direct3D, and Metal. Provides an abstraction layer for a graphics processing unit

.

Rendering command

An instruction for

rendering API

.

Rendering equation

Mathematical equation used as a model of light behavior in photorealistic rendering.

Rendering primitive

Geometry that can be drawn by a

rasterizer or graphics processing unit, connecting vertices, e.g. points, lines

, triangles, quadrilaterals

Rendering resources

Data managed by a graphics API, typically held in

texture maps and framebuffers

Repeating texture

A

texture map applied with wrap-round UV coordinates extending between the 0-1 range (representing one unit of the image), exhibiting periodicity

. Contrasts with clamped, mirrored modes or unique mappings.

Resource

Data (often held in a buffer managed by a rendering API) read by a

3D model

data.

RGB888

An RGB color value encoded as 8 bits per channel.

RGBA

An RGB color value together with an alpha channel, typically held in

bitmap images or intermediates in shading calculations

.

RGBA888

an RGBA color value encoded as 8 bits per channel

RGB color value

A

floating-point

representations.

RGB image

A

image channels

Rounding radius

A value used in smoothing the corners of a

3D polygon mesh.^[27]

Scene graph

Data structure commonly used to represent a 3D scene to be rendered as a directed acyclic graph.

Screen space

The

camera space

.

Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO)

Technique of approximating ambient occlusion in screen space.

Screen space directional occlusion

An enhancement of Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) taking direction into account to sample the ambient light, to better approximate global illumination.^[28]

Shader

A subroutine written in a

general purpose computation

.

Shading calculation

Surface lighting and texturing blending operations, e.g. including specularity, bump mapping etc.

Shadow buffer

A synonym for shadow map.

Shadow map

A texture buffer holding depth values rendered in a separate render pass from the perspective of a

lightsource, used in Shadow mapping; it is typically rendered onto other geometry in the main rendering pass.^[29]

Shadow volume

One of the techniques of adding shadows to 3D scenes.

Signed triangle area

Found using half the Z component of

triangle rasterization

.

Skybox

Method of creating background for a 3D scene by enclosing it in a textured cuboid (or another environment map).^[3]: 547

Sliverous triangle

Sliver triangle

A triangle with one or two extremely

rasterization processes.^[30]

Software renderer

Rendering software that doesn't use specialized hardware (a

CPU

for rendering.

Sparse texture

A texture that can partially reside in the video memory to reduce video memory usage and loading time.

Spatial hashing

A form of

key

.

Specular exponent

Controls the glossiness in the phong shading model.

Specular highlights

In shading, specular highlight is a bright highlight caused by specular reflections, more prominent on metallic surfaces. These highlights depend on the viewer's position as well as the position of the light source and surface normal.

Spline

A curve defined by polynomial interpolation through control points.

Sprite

2D image moving on the screen, with potential partial transparency and/or animation.^[3]: 550

State changes

The passing of changes in render states in a

sorting

.

Stencil buffer

A buffer storing an integer value for each according screen pixel, used e.g. to mask out specific operations and achieve specific effects.

Stereo rendering

Rendering the view twice separately for each eye in order to present depth.

Surface normal vector

In shading calculations, the

3D model surface, typically compared with the light and view vectors to compute the resulting visible colour. Also used for displacement mapping

.

Swizzled texture

A

cache coherency for 2D memory access patterns.^[31]

Terrain rendering

Rendering of landscapes, typically using heightmaps or voxels.

Tessellation

Converting a general 3D surface into polygonal representation, important because of HW being optimized for rendering polygons.^[3]: 683

Texel

Texture element, a pixel of a texture.

Texture cache

A specialised read-only

texture map

reads, accelerating texture sampling operations.

Texture sampling

The process of

texture lookup with texture filtering. Performed by a texture sampling unit in a graphics processing unit

Texture sampling unit

A

fixed-function unit performing texture sampling; also known as a texture mapping unit

.

Texture buffer

A region of

texture map

.

Texture map

A

3D models and indexed by UV mapping for 3D rendering

.

Texture space

The

texture space diffusion

Transform feedback

A feature of a

rendering pipeline where transformed vertices may be written back to a buffer for later use (e.g. for re-use in additional render passes or subsequent rendering commands), e.g. caching the result of skeletal animation for use in shadow rendering.^[32]

Triangulation

The process of turning arbitrary geometric models into

triangle primitives, suitable for algorithms requiring triangle meshes

Triangle primitive

The most common rendering primitive defining triangle meshes, rendered by graphics processing units

Triangle setup

The process of ordering triangle primitive vertices, calculating

rasterization.^[33]

Triangle setup unit

A

rasterization.^[33]

Trilinear filtering

Extension of bilinear filtering that additionally linearly interpolates between different Mipmap levels of the texture, eliminating sharp transitions.

Triple buffering

Improvement of double buffering for extra performance by adding another back buffer.

Tristrip

A common rendering primitive defining a sequence of adjacent

triangle primitives, where each triangle re-uses 2 vertices

from the previous one.

Trivial accept

The process of accepting an entire

occlusion culling

. The opposite of trivial rejection.

Trivial rejection

Rejecting a rendering primitive or

3D model based on a cheap calculation performed early in a graphics pipeline, (e.g. using outcodes in clipping

). The opposite of trivial accept.

Unified memory

A

discrete GPUs with the use of an MMU

.

UV coordinates

3D model

surface or any rendering primitive.

UV unwrapping

The process of flattening a

2D plane in a contiguous, spatially coherent manner for texture mapping

.

Vector graphics

Graphics represented as a set of geometrical primitives.

Vector maths library

A library defining mathematical operations on

SIMD implementations.^[38]

Vertex buffer

A rendering resource managed by a rendering API holding vertex data. May be connected by primitive indices to assemble rendering primitives such as triangle strips. Also known as a Vertex buffer object in OpenGL.

Vertex cache

A specialised read-only cache in a graphics processing unit for buffering indexed vertex buffer reads.

Vertex shader

Shader processing vertices of a 3D model.

View transformation

A

camera space

.

View vector

In shading calculations, a 3D unit vector between the camera and the point of interest on a surface.

View frustum

A truncated pyramid enclosing the subset of 3D space that projects onto a 'viewport' (a rectangular region in screen space, usually the entire screen).

Virtual reality

Computer-rendered content that (unlike augmented reality) completely replaces the user's view of the real world.^[3]: 915

Volume texture

A type of

texture map

with 3 dimensions.

Voxel

An extension of

pixels

into 3 dimensions.

VSync

Vertical synchronization, synchronizes the rendering rate with the monitor refresh rate in order to prevent displaying only partially updated frame buffer, which is disturbing especially with horizontal camera movement.

Vulkan

High performance, low level graphics API by Khronos Group.

W

W buffering

A

depth buffer storing inverse depth values, which has some advantages for interpolation

and precision scaling.

Weight map

A set of Vertex attributes controlling deformation of a

3D model during skeletal animation. Per-vertex weights are assigned to control the influence of multiple bones (achieved by interpolating the transformations from each).^[39]

Window

A rectangular region of a screen or

bitmap image

.

Wireframe

May refer to

wireframe rendering

.

Wireframe rendering

A rendering of a

3D modelling applications for greater interactive speed, and clarity for mesh editing

.

World space

The global coordinate system in a 3D scene, reached by applying a model transformation matrix from the objects' local coordinates.

Z

Z buffer

A

hidden surface determination

.

Z order

A

cache coherency

of spatial traversals.

Z test culling

A form of

Z buffer; may be performed by a graphics processing unit

using occlusion queries.