Wings 3D/User Manual/Glossary

Glossary of terms

Albedo


 * Ambient color
 * The overall color of an object. When rendering scene ambiance is multiplied by face ambiance.

Ambient light


 * Attenuation
 * The intensity of a light through the scene as it diminishes with distance from the source.


 * Backface
 * The interior side of a face on a solid object.


 * Bezier
 * A mathematically defined curve formed by the placement of control points.

Bevel

Bevel smoothing


 * Binaries
 * Machine readable files created by compiling source code.


 * Body
 * A 3D object composed of vertices, edges, and faces.


 * Bounding box
 * Generally, the minimum volume that can contain a selection. However, a single vertex bounding box is 0 and a single edge bounding box is two dimensional.


 * Box modeling
 * A common term for the type of polygon modelling used in Wings3D.


 * Central edge loop
 * A set of edges that completely encircles a model on one of the primary axes, usually the Z axis, for example as the center line of a head.


 * Chart packing
 * This is the last step that happens before the AutoUV window appears, i.e. each 2d chart is placed somewhere on texture.


 * Control Cage
 * The model in shaded wireframe mode prior to any smoothing operation.

Crease


 * Crease angle
 * The angle between two faces that share an edge.

Diffusion


 * Diffuse color
 * The overall color of a surface absent any highlights, like a matte surface.


 * Display Mode
 * The way a model appears on the screen, solid shaded, smooth shaded, or wireframe.


 * Dolly
 * Moving the camera in and out towards or away from the model; i.e. zooming.


 * Edge
 * The boundary between two faces having exactly two vertices; the line joining two vertices together.


 * Edge Loop
 * A set of edges that connect at vertices with 4 way intersections.


 * Edge Rings
 * The lateral edges that run between two adjacent edge loops.


 * Element
 * A graphic element in the scene that can be selected; a vertex, edge, face, body, or a light are all elements of a scene.


 * Emission
 * A color setting that affect the overall self illumination of the object.


 * Face
 * An element of an object consisting of a set of interconnected edges.


 * Facet subdivision
 * Breaking down a component of two dimensions (i.e. a face) into more and more faceted surfaces (faces) without doing any smoothing.


 * GNU GPL
 * GNU General Public License, one of the most popular OpenSource licensing agreements. GNU stands for GNU is Not Unix.


 * Ground plane
 * Usually an imaginary plane used as the horizontal reference plane.


 * GUI
 * Graphic User Interface.


 * Linear
 * A light setting, which causes the light to fall off in a linear manner.

Lumen

Luminance

Luminosity


 * Material
 * The underlying surface properties of an object or faces on an object. A material is different than a color or a texture. Color is but one component of a material and can be applied to vertices as well, and textures can be applied over a material.

Matte

Matte surface


 * Mesh
 * A 3D object composed of interconnected faces, usually composed of triangles, quads and n-gons.


 * Metaform Subdivision
 * A subdivision method which shows the smoothed model with the unsmoothed cage floating about it.


 * N-gon
 * A face with more than 4 sides.


 * Normal
 * A vector that extends outward perpendicular to a graphic element.

NURBS


 * NURBS curve
 * Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines; a mathematically defined curve of infinite resolution.


 * Object
 * A self contained solid body composed of vertices, edges, and faces also known as a body.


 * Opacity
 * The level of transparency for a face as set in the Material Editor.

Orbit


 * Organic model
 * A model of non-manufactured item, such as living (organic) things.

Orthogonal

Orthographic view

Pan

Parameterization

Perspective

Perspective view

Pole

Polygon modeling

Quadrangulate

Quadratic

Quads

Region

Segmentation

Shininess

Smooth-shaded

Smooth subdivision

Specular color

Specularity

Spot

Spot angle

Spot falloff

Subdivision

Subdivision modeling

Subdivision surfaces

Tesselate

Texture

Track

Transparency

Tri’s

Triangles

Triangulate

Tumble

UV

UV mapping

Vector

Vertex

View port

Widgets

Winged-edge topology

Wireframe

Wire Shaded

Workspace



Below is the Wings3d manual ver. 1.6 converted to text. I didn't have time to figure out how to add another page to the wiki so I dumped it here. I'll try to start moving content to its proper place forthwith. regards, takayuki



Edit: Moved this to Wings 3D: User Manual/Text Version (From PDF)