Simple animations for a simple world: Glossary type thingy....

Hello everyone out there in internet land, I hope everyone is well today's post is gonna be a glossary basically I understand people that may read my blog may not be 3D pros and some terms might be alien to them and totally confuse them so today's post will be about explaing about some of the most common terms used when it comes to 3D stuff of course this will also help when the examiners comes to read this at they can understand it :)

Terms:

Polygon or Poly for short.

Now I am pretty sure you all know what a polygon is, a shape like a square etc well in 3D modelling most things are made of these beautiful things in a technique called "Polygon Modelling" and is what is used most of the time in 3D modelling here some examples...

Look at those polys....

However as you can see the above picture is quite.... blocky and low quality and is not made up of many polygons hence the term "Low Poly" which means not made up of many polygons there is a technique called Subdividing which let you create more polygons and doing this will create a much higher quality model for example if you subdived the above model you could be left with something like this...

2. Curves

Of course if polygons aren't your thing you can model with curves instead well slightly harder these offer some high quality models.

3. Sculpting

There is one other form of modelling used its called sculpting is exactly what it means its a form of modelling like you were using clay in the real world.

Its not easy but can give some amazing results.

As you can see very very detailed.

4. Render or Rendering

Rendering is term used in computer graphics all the time and what rendering does is converts a 3D object to a 2D image and adds photorealistic effects to them or other effects below is a render of a very high detail scene using glass effects.

5. Wireframe "Wire mode"

Wireframe is type of view in 3D programs that allow you to see in side a structure and see how the structure is created and has a number of uses in 3D modelling for example it allows you to view the model from any point, allows you to see where problems are quicker if there is vertex's out of line etc, and provides a simple view.

6. Poly-count

Simply the amount of polygons in the mesh.

7. Textures

A texture is normally a 2D image that maps onto of a 3D model to make it seem more real for example if you created a human model you would put skin textures on the model to make it seem more real same if you were making a rock you would put a stone texture onto to make it more real.

Stone like texture.

8. Rigging

Is a technique that involves giving the character bones "Armatures" these are then used to pose the model and animate it, a complete set of armatures on a model is called a "Rig" hence why the term is called Rigging.

9. Facial Rigging

The same as normal rigging however it is used around a characters face and contains different types of armatures which allow the characters face to perform different animations, facial rigging is also used to lip-sync a character to provide the character with more realism.

10. Lip-syncing

Lip syncing is where you have a voice clip done by a voice actor and you animate the lips of the character to move in time with it, thus giving the impression the character is talking.

11. Particle systems

Particles are used in 3D modelling and animation to create effects like, explosions water, rain, snow, dust, clouds etc

There are normally two types of particles Snowflakes or Halos depending on what 3D software your using and Hair.

Heres two very usful images from Wikipedia showing the differences between the two.