3D Modeling FINAL

2D Map

A 2-dimensional image or pattern. Requires mapping coordinates to render and appear in viewports

Boolean Operation

A Boolean object combines two or more objects by performing a logical operation on their geometry. The objects typically overlap, but they don't have to. The original two objects are the operands and the Boolean object itself is the result of the operation. For geometry, the standard Boolean operations are: Union: The Boolean object contains the volume of both original objects. The intersecting or overlapping portion of the geometry is removed. Intersection: The Boolean object contains only the volume that was common to both original objects (in other words, where they overlapped). Subtraction (or difference): The Boolean object contains the volume of one original object with the intersection volume subtracted from it.

Bitmap

A bitmap is a still image produced by a fixed matrix of colored pixels, like a mosaic. You can use bitmaps as textures for materials, as backgrounds to viewports, and as rendered environments. You can use an animation or video file as a bitmap, in which case the material or background changes over time.

Origin

A coordinate system assigns an arbitrary point in space as the origin, and sets each axis at that point to zero. In the world coordinate system, numbers increase from the origin to the right along the X axis, upward along the Y axis, and away from you on the Z axis. Numbers decrease (-1, -2, -3, and so on) to the left along the X axis, downward along the Y axis, and toward you along the Z axis. The distance between each whole number is called a unit of measurement (a 3ds Max unit). Origin is the 0,0,0 point where the X, Y, and Z axes intersect. You can combine the measurements of all three axes to mark specific locations in 3D space. The combined measurements are called coordinates

Blend Object

A dependent NURBS object that connects two curves or two surfaces. The curvature of the blend is controlled by the objects it connects, and by two tension parameters that control the "length" of effect of the tangent for each of the "parent" objects.

Fillet

A dependent NURBS object that is an arc connecting two curves. It is controlled by the objects it connects, and by a radius parameter.

Dependent

A dependent is an object whose behavior or appearance can be influenced by other objects. Dependents include instances, references, and objects sharing a common modifier (the same objects that appear green when Show Dependencies is on in the View menu). Also, an object whose motion is constrained by another's is a dependent of the constraining object.

Dummy Object

A dummy object is a non-rendering object that you use as an animation helper. The primary use of the dummy helper object is to assist you in creating complex motions and building complex hierarchies. Because dummies are invisible in the rendered scene, they are an excellent choice for offset joints, connectors between objects, and handles for manipulating complex hierarchies.

Game Engine

A game engine is a software framework designed for the creation and development of video games. Developers use them to create games for consoles, mobile devices and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics.

Gizmo/Center

A gizmo is geometry that appears in viewports, but not in the scene. You manipulate a gizmo to modify the scene geometry or other effects. There are gizmos for transforms, modifiers, atmospheric apparatus, and some directly modifiable geometry such as spotlight cones

Transform Gizmo

A gizmo that is displayed in viewports and provides a visual aid when you transform objects.

Mapped Material

A mapped material is a material that contains one or more maps. Typically, it contains a bitmap as a Diffuse map, but having any map or maps applied qualifies a material as mapped. In order for a mapped material containing a 2D map to appear properly in the viewports and in the rendered image, any object to which it's applied generally needs mapping coordinates. By default, most parametric objects in 3ds Max already have mapping coordinates applied; you can also use the UVW Map modifier (link) or Unwrap UVW modifier (link) to provide mapping coordinates.

Materials

A material is data that you assign to the surface or faces of an object so that it appears a certain way when rendered. Materials can affect object color, glossiness, opacity, and so on.

Glossiness and Specular Level Settings

A material's glossiness (or dullness) depends on the size and intensity of its specular highlight. In the Material Editor, the Glossiness spinner affects the size of the specular area, and the Specular Level spinner affects the intensity of the glossiness.

Mesh

A mesh is a type of geometric model of a three-dimensional object in which the basic shape is made up of points, or vertices, connected by edges. The renderable surface of the mesh object is made up of faces or polygons that connect the vertices and edges. Examples of mesh objects in 3ds Max are primitives such as Sphere and Teapot, as well as Editable Mesh and Editable Polygon objects. In 3ds Max you can edit a mesh by transforming, adding, and deleting the various elements, or sub-objects: vertices, edges, faces, and polygons. You can also apply various changes with modifiers

Normal

A normal is a vector that defines which way a face or vertex is pointing. The direction of the normal indicates the front, or outer surface of the face or vertex. The normal of each face can point in a different direction. You can manually flip or unify face normals to fix surface errors caused by modeling operations or by importing meshes from other programs.

Particle System (Particle Flow)

A particle system in Particle Flow consists of all flows defined in Particle View, as well as parameters defined for all Particle Flow sources. In effect, it's the totality of settings in Particle Flow.

Path

A path is the line (or other shape) along which shapes are lofted to create 3D Loft objects. The Path constraint also lets you assign a line or other shape as a motion path. A motion path is a form of trajectory.

Plug-Ins

A plug-in is a feature or functionality supplied by an independent program or component. Plug-ins can be supplied by third-party vendors or independent software developers. For example, several Video Post filter and layering plug-ins ship with 3ds Max.

Graphics Card

A printed circuit board that controls the output to a display screen.

Axonometric View

A projected view of 3-dimensional space that displays from one to three sides of an object. The lines in an axonometric view do not converge to vanishing points as they do in a perspective view, so lines that are parallel in 3D space are parallel in the view. For this reason, diagonal and curved lines can appear to be distorted.

Bezier Curve

A segment on an editable spline that has its vertices set to Bezier or Bezier Corner is considered a Bezier Curve. A curve modeled using a parametric polynomial technique. Bezier curves can be defined by many vertices. Each vertex is controlled by two other points that control the endpoint tangent vectors. Bezier curves were developed by P. Bezier for computer modeling in automobile design.

Script

A sequence of instructions used to automate a task. Scripts are typically text files containing coded instructions for a particular application. In 3ds Max, the MAXScript utility supports a scripting language. MAXScript scripts have the file name extension .ms. By default, they are saved in the scripts folder.

Shadow Map

A shadow map is a bitmap that the renderer generates during a pre-rendering pass of the scene. Shadow maps don't show the color cast by transparent or translucent objects. On the other hand, shadow maps can have soft-edged shadows, which ray-traced shadows cannot. The parameters can be changed in the Shadow Map Parameters Rollout. A shadow-map is projected from the direction of the light. This method provides a softer edge and can require less calculation time than ray-traced shadows, but it's less accurate.

Sub-Object

A sub-object is an individual member of or a subset of an object's geometry. Many objects have various types of sub-objects that you can work with independently. For example, an editable mesh object's sub-object levels are Vertex, Edge, Face, Polygon, and Element. To access sub-objects, go to the Modifier panel. In the modifier stack display, click the plus-sign button to display an object's hierarchy, and then choose the sub-objects level from the hierarchy. At the sub-objects level you can select sub-objects, transform the selections, apply modifiers, and so on.

Material ID

A sub-object's (face or polygon) material ID is the value that determines which sub-material the sub-object uses when you apply a Multi/Sub-Object material to the object to which the surface belongs. Also, when you assign a material with a Multi/Sub-Map shader to several objects, the material IDs can determine where the sub-maps go.

Sub-D Modeling

A subdivision surface is a polygon mesh that has been divided into more faces while retaining the object's general shape. You perform subdivision to add detail to an object, or to smooth it out.

Texture

A texture, also known as a texture map, is an image used to add color and patterns to an object surface. For example, you could use a photo of sand to make an object look like a beach or desert. Typically, a texture takes the form of a bitmap used as the Diffuse map in a material. More generally, a texture is any map used to lend variety to a surface.

Translucency

A translucent material transmits light, but unlike a transparent material, it also scatters the light so those objects behind the material cannot be seen clearly. Raytrace materials can simulate translucency. A Raytrace material's Translucency color component ignores surface normal directions, giving the effect of light scattering. You can also obtain translucency effects using the Standard material's Translucent shader.

Vertex

A vertex (plural form: vertices) is a single point whose sole property is its position in 3D space, which is typically defined by values for the X axis, Y axis, and Z axis. Vertices form the basic structure of geometric objects in 3ds Max, including mesh objects, splines, NURBS, and patches

Aliasing/Antialiasing

Aliasing is the staircase effect that occurs when diagonal or curved lines or borders are drawn on raster displays consisting of square or rectangular pixels. Antialiasing improves image quality by smoothing such internal image edges. Antialiasing can be either on or off. Turn this off only when you're rendering test images and want greater speed. Leave it on at all other times

Alpha Channel

Alpha is a type of data, found in 32-bit bitmap files, that assigns transparency to the pixels in the image.

Ambient Colour

Ambient color is the color of an object where it is in shadow. This color is what the object reflects when illuminated by ambient light rather than direct light.

Ambient Light

Ambient light is the general light that illuminates the entire scene. It has a uniform intensity and is uniformly diffuse. It has no discernible source and no discernible direction.

Edge

An edge is a straight or curved line that connects two vertices in a mesh object or spline. You can modify object shapes by transforming its edges; in effect, by doing so you're moving two vertices simultaneously.

Editable Mesh

An editable mesh is a type of deformable object. An editable mesh is a trimesh: that is, it uses triangular polygons. Editable meshes are useful for creating simple, low-polygonal objects or control meshes for MeshSmooth and HSDS modelling. You can convert a NURBS or patch surface to an editable mesh. Editable meshes require little memory, and are a natural method of modeling with polygonal objects.

Editable Poly

An editable poly is a type of deformable object. An editable poly is a polygonal mesh; that is, unlike an editable mesh, it uses more than three-sided polygons. Editable polys are useful in that they avoid invisible edges. For example, if you use a cut-and-slice operation with editable polys, 3ds Max doesn't insert extra vertices along any invisible edge. You can convert NURBS surfaces, editable meshes, splines, primitives, and patch surfaces to editable polys.

Element

An element is one of two or more individual mesh objects (that is, groups of contiguous faces) grouped together into one larger object. For example, if you attach one box to another, you create one mesh object from the two boxes. Each box is now an element of the object. Any function you perform on that object affects all its elements. However, you can manipulate the elements independently at the Element sub-object level.

Emitter

An emitter is an object that emits particles; particles are born, or first enter the scene, at the emitter's location. By default, Particle Flow uses the source icon as an emitter, but alternatively any other object in the scene can emit particles using the Position Object operator.

Instance

An instance is an interchangeable clone of the original. You can instance objects, modifiers, controllers, materials, and maps. Changing an attribute of an instanced item also changes the same attribute of all instances. Object instances are not only alike in geometry, but also share modifiers, materials and maps, and animation controllers. When you change one instance by applying a modifier, for example, all the other instances change with it. Each instance has its own set of transforms, object properties and space warp bindings; these are not shared among instances.

Area Lights

Area lights are a feature of the mental ray renderer. Instead of emitting light from a point source, they emit light from a broader area around the source. Area lights create soft-edged shadows. This can help improve the realism of your rendering.

Area Shadows

Area shadows simulate shadows generated by a light with area or volume.

Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio describes the proportions of a still image or the frames in a movie, expressed as the ratio of width to height, regardless of the image's resolution.

Biped

Biped is a 3ds Max system provided with the character studio feature. It provides the armature used to pose a character, and facilities to animate it using either footsteps or freeform animation.

FFD

FFD stands for free-form deformation. It is used in computer animation for effects like dancing cars and gas tanks. You can use it as well for modeling rounded shapes such as chairs and sculpture. An FFD modifier surrounds the selected geometry with a lattice box or cylinder. By adjusting the control points of the lattice, you deform the enclosed geometry.

Faceted

Faceted shading provides a constant shading across each facet, or co-planar surface of the object. The result has the appearance of so-called "flat" shading, except that it provides specular highlights. Turn on Faceted to provide a faceted look to your geometry without having to explicitly change the smoothing groups in the object with the Edit Mesh modifier. Both Standard and Raytrace materials provide a Faceted toggle.

Shaders (Standard material)

For a standard material, the shader is the algorithm that controls how the material responds to light. Shaders especially control how highlights appear. They also provide a material's color components, and control its opacity, self-illumination, and other settings. Shaders are often named for their inventors; they can also be named for the effect they provide.

Matte Object

For example, you might make a complex scene for the background of your animation, render it once, then assign the resulting bitmap as a background using only a few animated objects during the rendering of the animation. If you then needed one of your objects to appear from behind some portion of the background, such as a building, you would create a matte object that matches the building. You then place the animated object behind it. The bitmap image of the building appears, but the animated object is blocked until it moves from behind the matte object. Matte objects, though invisible, can cast shadows. Matte objects can also receive shadows. When the Matte/Shadow material's Affect Alpha checkbox is set, shadows cast on the matte object are applied to the alpha channel. This lets you render maps with alpha shadows that you can composite later. To properly generate shadows on a matte object, turn off the Opaque Alpha checkbox and then set the Affect Alpha checkbox.

Function Curve

Function curves are editable splines that represent animation values in a line-graph format. They provide a valuable way of both visualizing and editing your animation tracks. Function curves appear in the Track View, and provide the best method of viewing and editing animation tracks. With the function curve display, you can actually see the characteristics of the animation as they change over time. The steepness of the curve indicates the velocity of an object in the scene. If the curve steepens, the object is accelerating. If the curve flattens out, the object is slowing.

HDRI

High Dynamic Range Imaging HDRI is a 32 bit image - 32 bits of red, green, and blue. This large amount of bit depth is necessary because our eyes have a huge range of contrast, while the monitors we view things on don't. (Our eyes - 1,000,000/1 vs. Computers - 1,000/1) Great for providing desired reflections and range of colour

IBL

Image Based Lighting Rather than just having a light shining in one direction, you have a skylight/'hemisphere' figure, that takes a 360 panoramic image of an environment; unwrapped and projected down onto your 3D object. The environment is a space of unknown depth of the virtual world of 3D, it's represented as an image Shadowing, reflections provided by direct light, while image projection of light and dark areas are provided by the hemisphere light.

Object Instance

In 3ds Max, an instance is a completely interchangeable clone of the original object. Modifying an instanced object is the same as modifying the original. Instances are not only alike in geometry, but also share modifiers and materials. When you change one instance by applying a modifier, for example, all the other instances change with it. Each instance has its own set of transforms, object properties, and space warp bindings. These are not shared among instances. Within 3ds Max, instances derive from the same master object. What you're doing is applying a single modifier to a single master object. In the viewport, what you see as multiple objects are multiple instances of the same definition.

Reference Object

In Particle Flow, a reference object is a geometry object or collection of objects used as particles by the Shape Instance operator. It can be a single object, a group, a hierarchy, or even a compound object consisting of several elements.

Vector Field

In crowd animation, a vector field is a special type of space warp that crowd members can use to move around irregular objects such as a curved, concave surface. The vector field gizmo, a box-shaped lattice, is placed and sized so that it surrounds the object to be avoided. The vectors are generated from the lattice intersections. These vectors are, by default, perpendicular to the surface of the object to which the field is applied; if necessary, you can smooth them out with a blending function. The crowd members move around the object by traveling perpendicular to the vectors

Gravity

In footstep animation, character studio calculates the effect of gravity for those periods when a biped is airborne (a biped becomes airborne when it moves with a running or jumping gait). You can use the GravAccel setting to scale the effect of gravity.

Chamfer

In general, "chamfer" refers to rounding off a sharp edge or corner. 3ds Max includes two 3D primitives that incorporate chamfering: ChamferBox and ChamferCyl. In addition, chamfer options are available in various other program features.

Shaders (mental ray renderer)

In mental ray, a shader is a function that calculates light effects. There can be shaders for lights, cameras (lens shaders), materials, shadows, and so on. In 3ds Max, the mental ray translator provides the functionality of light and camera shaders. Material shaders correspond to 3ds Max materials.

Skylight

In the real world, daylight does not just come from direct sunlight; it also comes from skylight that is scattered through the atmosphere. 3ds Max offers great realism and accuracy by calculating not only sunlight, but calculating this scattered light as well. In 3ds Max, the sky is modeled as a dome of infinite radius placed around the scene. Daylight computes the illumination of a point in the scene with reference to all directions around the point where the sky is visible. The sky brightness is not constant over the sky dome, but rather it changes depending upon the position of the sun.

Inverse Kinematics

Inverse kinematics (IK) is a positioning and animation method that is built on top of the concepts of hierarchical linking. To understand how IK works you must first understand the principles of hierarchical linking and forward kinematics. Inverse kinematics starts with linking and pivot placement as its foundation and then adds the following principles: Joints are constrained with specific positional and rotational properties. Position and orientation of parent objects is determined by the position and orientation of child objects.

Keyframes/Keys

Keyframes record the transition points in the animation of any element in the scene, such as the motion of an object or the bend amount applied by a modifier. The values at these keyframes are called keys.

Layers

Layers are like transparent overlays, and allow you to organize and group different types of scene information. The objects you create have common properties including color, visibility, renderability, and display. An object can assume these properties from the layer on which you create it.

Layout Mode

Layout mode is active while the Auto Key button and Set Key button are both turned off. While you are in Layout mode, you can transform objects and sub-objects, and change the values of animatable parameters, without generating animation keys.

MAX Script

MAXScript is the general-purpose scripting language for 3ds Max and related products. While it works the same for all products, some functions are specific to each. You can use MAXScript to automate many tasks, including modeling, animation, material construction, and rendering. You can also use MAXScript to add custom command-panel rollouts to the user interface.

Mapping Coordinates

Mapping coordinates, also known as UVW coordinates, specify the placement, orientation, and scale of a map on textured geometry.

Physics Simulation

MassFX provides tools for animating objects to behave as they do in the physical world. To start learning MassFX, it's best to begin with the rigid body, which simulates hard objects such as wood, plastic, and metal.

Modifier

Modifiers, as the name implies, modify an object's geometrical structure, deforming it in some way. When you apply a taper modifier to the end of a cylinder, for example, the vertices near the end move closer together. Modifiers make changes in the geometry that stay in effect until you adjust or delete the modifier.

UVW Coordinates

Most material maps are a 2D plane assigned to a 3D surface. Consequently, the coordinate system used to describe the placement and transformation of maps is different from the X, Y, and Z axis coordinates used in 3D space. Specifically, mapping coordinates use the letters U, V, and W; the three letters preceding X, Y, and Z in the alphabet. The U, V, and W coordinates parallel the relative directions of X, Y, and Z coordinates. If you look at a 2D map image, U is the equivalent of X, and represents the horizontal direction of the map. V is the equivalent of Y, and represents the vertical direction of the map. W is the equivalent of Z and represents a direction perpendicular to the UV plane of the map.

Motion Blur

Motion blur can enhance the realism of a rendered animation by simulating the way a real-world camera works. A camera has a shutter speed, and if significant movement occurs during the time the shutter is open, the image on film is blurred.

NURMS

NURMS stands for Non-Uniform Rational Mesh Smooth. You can create meshes smoothed by this method with the MeshSmooth modifier.

Network Rendering

Network Rendering is the rendering of animations using more than one computer connected by a network. Large and complex animations take many hours to render, even on the fastest PCs. Network rendering allows you to use the power of other computers to speed up the process. Any network-connected PCs that have 3ds Max installed can participate. You can even render using computers connected only by the Internet.

Omnidirectional Light

Omnidirectional (omni) lights are standard light objects that provide a point source of illumination that shoots out in all directions. They're easy to set up, but you can't restrict the focus of their beam. You can, however restrict which objects are illuminated by an omni light. When no lights exist in your scene, two invisible omni lights are turned on by default to provide overall illumination in the scene. However, as soon as you create your own light in the scene, the two default lights are turned off.

Particle System

Particle systems are objects that generate non-editable sub-objects, called particles, for the purpose of simulating snow, rain, dust, and so on. The particle system object generates the particles over time. You use particle systems primarily in animations. 3ds Max provides several built-in particle systems, including Spray and Snow. 3ds Max also offers an event-driven particle system called Particle Flow. Your configuration might have other plug-in particle systems installed.

Particles

Particle systems are useful for a variety of animation tasks. Primarily, they're employed when animating a large number of small objects using procedural methods; for instance, creating a snowstorm, a stream of water, or an explosion. 3ds Max provides two different types of particle systems: event-driven and non-event-driven. The event-driven particle system, Particle Flow, tests particle properties, and, based on the test results, sends them to different events. Each event assigns various attributes and behaviors to the particles while they're in the event. In the non-event-driven systems, particles typically exhibit consistent properties throughout the animation.

Perspective View

Perspective views most closely resemble human vision. Objects appear to recede into the distance, creating a sense of depth and space. For most 3D computer graphics, this is the view used in the final output that the client sees onscreen or on the page.

Physique

Physique is a modifier that, when applied to a mesh, allows the movements of an underlying skeleton to seamlessly move the mesh like bones and muscle under a human skin. Physique will work on any point-based object, including geometric primitives, editable meshes, patch-based objects, NURBS, and FFD space warps. It will attach to any skeleton structure, including a biped, bones, splines, or any hierarchy.

3D Compositing

Process of combining several different elements into a finished product. 3D compositing is a process by which various elements, often including both live action film footage or photographs and virtual computer-generated images, are layered and composited together into a single image or scene. This type of compositing is often done to create still images that include various components into a single image, though it can also be used in the post-production process for film or television programs to composite different elements into a video sequence. 3D compositing often differs from two-dimensional or 2D compositing in the way in which the different layers can be made to interact and more realistically affect each other.

Ray-traced Shadows

Ray-traced shadows are generated by tracing the path of rays sampled from a light source. Ray-traced shadows are more accurate than shadow-mapped shadows. They always produce a hard edge. Ray-traced shadows are more realistic for transparent and translucent objects. Also, only ray-tracing can generate shadows for wireframe object

Schematic View

Schematic View is a window that lets you see everything in your scene as a node on a graph. The nodes are repositionable to create custom configurations. Use Schematic View to see and select all nodes that share a relationship, such as a material or instanced modifier. You can perform basic operations on the nodes such as rename, cut and paste modifiers or materials, or create hierarchical linkages. You can use Schematic View to see and edit other relationships such as wired parameters and constraints.

Geometric Primitives

Simple primitive objects such as, spheres, boxes, cylinders, and so on.

Sub-Object Level

Some types of objects let you access a sub-object level to edit their component parts. For example, editable meshes have Vertex, Edge, Face, Polygon, and Element sub-object levels. NURBS models can have Surface, Curve, Point, Surface CV, Curve CV, and Import sub-object levels. You change the active sub-object level using the Modifier Stack display on the Modify panel.

Space Warps

Space warps are objects that provide a variety of "force field" effects on other objects in the scene. Space warps themselves are not renderable. You use them to affect the appearance of other objects, sometimes a large number of objects at the same time. Some space warps deform object geometry by generating ripples, waves, or explosions. Other space warps are meant specifically for use with particle systems, and simulate natural effects such as wind blowing snow or rain about, or a rock in the path of a waterfall.

Camera Matching

The Camera Match utility uses a bitmap background photo and five or more special "CamPoint" objects to create or modify a camera so that its position, orientation, and field-of-view matches that of the camera that originally created the photo.

Camera tracking

The Camera Tracker utility synchronizes a background by animating the movement of a camera inside 3ds Max to match the movement of a real camera that was used to shoot a movie.

Cloth Simulation

The Cloth modifier is the heart of the Cloth system, and is applied to all objects in your scene that need to be part of the Cloth simulation. This is where you define cloth and collision objects, assign properties, and execute the simulation. Other controls include creating constraints, interactively dragging the cloth, and erasing parts of the simulation. •Select an object. > Modify panel > Modifier List > Object-Space Modifiers > Cloth •Select an object. > Modifiers menu > Cloth > Cloth In a Cloth simulation, you will let Cloth know which objects will be part of the simulation, and which objects will not. Once you have done this, you define what the objects are made of. You can specify what is made of cloth, and what is a solid, collision object. Because Cloth is a modifier, an instance of it is assigned to each object to be included in the Cloth simulation. This includes all cloth and collision objects. Be aware that two cloth objects with two separate applications of the Cloth modifier will not interact with one another. There are a couple of ways to include objects in the simulation: oSelect all of the objects at once and apply the Cloth modifier to them. oApply Cloth to one or more objects and then add objects with the Add Objects button, available on both the Object rollout and the Object Properties Dialog (Cloth).

MAX Files

The MAX file format is the native format used when saving and loading scenes in 3ds Max. A MAX file contains all scene elements, including geometry, materials, lights, cameras, animation, and so on. However, it does not contain files that are externally referenced by the scene, such as XRefs and bitmap images. When you use the Open, Save, and Save As commands, 3ds Max uses the MAX file format.

Safe Frame

The Safe Frame provides a guide to help avoid rendering portions of your image that might be blocked in the final output. Safe frame borders show which portions of a viewport will be visible when rendered to video.

Sunlight

The Sun is modeled as a parallel light source, which makes the incident direction of sunlight constant over all surfaces in the scene. You can specify the direction and intensity of the sun directly. Alternatively, the direction and intensity of the sun can be calculated based on geographical location, time, and sky condition settings.

Bounding Box

The bounding box is the smallest box that encloses the maximum dimensions or extents of an object. A bounding box appears around selected objects in non-Wireframe viewports.

World Coordinate System

The coordinate system for world space or the model space as a whole. World space is the universal coordinate system for all objects in the scene. When you look at the home grid in the viewports, you see the World Space coordinate system. World space is constant and immovable. In the world coordinate system seen from the front, the X axis runs in a positive direction to the right, the Z axis runs in a positive direction upward, and the Y axis runs in a positive direction away from you.

Forward Kinematics

The default method of manipulating a hierarchy uses a technique called "forward kinematics". The basic principles employed by this technique are: Hierarchical linking from parent to child Placement of pivot points to define the connecting joint between linked objects Inheritance of position, rotation, and scale transforms from parent to child In forward kinematics, when a parent object moves, its children must follow. If the child wants to go off on its own, the parent remains behind. For example, in a hierarchical linkage of a human figure, when the torso (the parent) bends over, the head (the child) moves along with it, but you can turn the head without affecting the torso.

Diffuse Colour

The diffuse color is the color that an object reflects when illuminated by "good lighting," that is, by direct daylight or artificial light that makes the object easy to see.

Maps

The images you assign to materials are called maps. Maps offer the level of realism you look for in materials. 3ds Max provides several different map types. They include standard bitmaps (such as .bmp, .jpg, or .tga files), procedural maps, such as Checker or Marble, and image-processing systems such as compositors and masking systems.

Local Coordinate System

The local coordinate system is the coordinate system that relates specifically to the selected object. Each object has its own local center and coordinate system as defined by the location and orientation of the object's pivot point. The local center and coordinate system of an object combine to define its object space.

Modifier Stack

The modifier stack is the key to managing all aspects of object modification. You use the stack to: View and manipulate the sequence of modifiers Find a particular modifier Adjust a modifier's parameters Select a modifier's gizmo or center Activate or deactivate a modifier Delete or disable a modifier The effect of modifiers is directly related to their sequence, or order, in the stack. Where you put a modifier in the stack is critical, because 3ds Max applies modifiers in their stack order, beginning at the bottom, and carries the cumulative change upward. By clicking any entry in the stack, you go back to the point where you made that modification. You can then rework your decisions or discard the modification entirely by deleting it. You can also insert a new modifier in the stack at that point.

Motion Capture

The process of digitizing the movements of a live "actor" or "talent." This requires a motion-capture device.

Scanline Renderer

The scanline renderer renders the scene as a series of horizontal lines. It is one of the production renderers provided with 3ds Max, as opposed to the interactive renderer used in viewports. Images produced by production renderers display in the rendered frame window, a separate window with its own controls. The scanline renderer is the original 3ds Max renderer, and it is the default production renderer choice when you first use the Render Setup dialog or from Video Post.

Pivot Point

The transform center, or pivot point, is the spot about which a rotation takes place, or to and from which a scale occurs. Pivot point sets hand to the center of the clock face. All objects have a pivot point. You can think of the pivot point as representing an object's local center and local coordinate system. The pivot point of an object is used for a number of purposes: As the center for rotation and scaling when the Pivot Point transform center is selected. As the default location of a modifier center. As the transform origin for linked children. As the joint location for IK. You can display and adjust the position and orientation of an object's pivot point at any time using the Pivot functions in the Hierarchy command panel. Adjusting an object's pivot has no effect on any children linked to that object.

Track View

Track View provides a visual representation of animation keys, allowing you to view, edit, copy and adjust one or several keys at a time. This is where you control the timing of your animation, through the manipulation of keys, curves and ranges. You can also assign animation controllers to interpolate or control all the keys and parameters for the objects in your scene.

Forward Kinematics (Bipeds)

Using an arm to move a hand is an example of forward kinematics. Using the hand to move the arm is an example of inverse kinematics. When you use freeform animation to animate a biped, you can use both kinds of kinematics. By planting a hand or foot, you use another object (object space) or the world (world space) to control IK motion. In this method, the IK Blend parameter in the Key Info rollout determines how forward kinematics and inverse kinematics are blended to interpolate intermediate positions.

Mirroring

When working with a biped, the Mirror control in the Keyframing Tools rollout allows you to mirror the entire biped animation.

Transforms

When you create any object, 3ds Max records its position, rotation, and scale information in an internal table called a transformation matrix. Subsequent position, rotation, and scale adjustments are called transforms.

Face/Polygon

When you render a scene containing geometry, 3ds Max uses the faces and polygons in a mesh object to draw the object surfaces. Essentially, faces and polygons are planar objects that fill in the gaps between edges in the object structure. A face typically has three sides; a polygon can have three or more sides. You can treat a polygon as a single object while modeling, but at render time, 3ds Max breaks down all polygons into triangular faces.

Inverse Kinematics (Biped)

When you work with a biped, you can use inverse kinematics (IK) by moving the hands or feet in freeform animation. For example, you can position an arm by moving the hand. A biped has three inverse kinematics parameters that you can vary during the limb's motion by setting them at each key of the arm and leg tracks.

Orthographic View

Whether produced on computer or paper, most 3D design relies on 2D representations for accurate description of objects and their positioning. Maps, plans, cross-sections, and elevations are all examples of 2D representations. Each of these views represents an orthographic view. In familiar terms, you might think of these views as "flat" or "straight-on," or as "looking at right angles." Orthographic views are two-dimensional, each defined by two world coordinate axes. Combinations of these axes produce three pairs of orthographic views: top and bottom; front and back; left and right.

Wireframe mode

Wireframe is a viewport display setting that lets you view objects in a given viewport as a wire mesh. This is the default setting for non-Perspective viewports. You change this setting from the Shading viewport label menu. In addition, you can set the Standard and Raytrace materials to render as wires. Use the Extended Parameters rollout to set the size of the wire, and specify its measurement in either pixels or units.

World-Space Modifiers (WSM)

World space is the universal coordinate system that applies to the entire scene. A world-space modifier, as opposed to an object-space modifier, affects an object but uses world coordinates. A world-space modifier always appears at the top of the modifier stack. Its effect is independent of its order in the stack

Hotspot/Falloff

You've seen how a flashlight or a theater follow spot casts a circle of light. Depending on the quality of the flashlight, or the adjustment of the follow spot, the edge of the cast pool of light is either blurred or sharp. In the case of a blurred pool of light, the bright circle in the center is the hotspot, which has an even intensity. The outer extremity of the light, where it meets the darkness, is the falloff. The difference in circumference between the hotspot and the falloff determines the relative sharpness of the pool of light. For example, if the hotspot and falloff are nearly the same size, the pool of light has a sharp edge. The hotspot angle of a spotlight must always be smaller than the falloff angle. Put another way, the hotspot must always be inside the falloff.

CAD

•Computer aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer systems (or workstations) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. CAD software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve communications through documentation, and to create a database for manufacturing. CAD output is often in the form of electronic files for print, machining, or other manufacturing operations.

Photometric Lighting

•Photometric lights use photometric (light energy) values that enable you to more accurately define lights as they would be in the real world. You can create lights with various distribution and color characteristics, or import specific photometric files available from lighting manufacturers. •Note: Photometric lights always attenuate using an inverse-square falloff, and rely on your scene using realistic units. •When you create lights from the Create panel, photometric lights appear as the default.

VFX

•Visual Effects •The processes by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live action shot in film making. •Visual effects involve in the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery have recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and easy-to-use animation and compositing software.