Glossary
3D terms, explained plainly.
File formats, texture maps, mesh topology and capture techniques: what each term means and why it matters when you make, convert or print a 3D model.
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C
- CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution)CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution) is a licence that lets anyone use, adapt and commercialise a work, provided they give appropriate credit to the creator.
- CC0 (public domain)CC0 is a Creative Commons tool that lets creators waive all their copyright in a work, placing it as close to the public domain as the law allows.
D
- Displacement mapA displacement map is a greyscale texture that physically moves a surface's vertices in or out, creating real geometric detail rather than a lighting illusion.
- Draco compressionDraco is an open-source library from Google that compresses 3D mesh geometry. Through a glTF extension, it can make GLB files much smaller to download.
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- Gaussian splatting3D Gaussian splatting represents a captured scene as millions of small, soft, semi-transparent coloured blobs (Gaussians) that can be rendered in real time.
- GLBGLB is the binary, single-file form of glTF 2.0. It packs a 3D model's geometry, materials, textures and animations into one compact file.
- glTFglTF (GL Transmission Format) is an open, royalty-free standard from the Khronos Group for delivering 3D models and scenes efficiently to apps and browsers.
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- Level of detail (LOD)Level of detail (LOD) is a technique that swaps a model for progressively simpler versions as it gets farther from the camera, saving performance where the difference can't be seen.
- LithophaneA lithophane is a thin translucent panel whose thickness varies with an image, so the picture appears in detail when it's lit from behind.
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- NeRF (Neural Radiance Fields)A neural radiance field (NeRF) is a neural network trained on photos of a scene that can render that scene from new viewpoints, by predicting colour and density at any point in space.
- Normal mapA normal map is a texture that tells the renderer which way each point on a surface faces, faking fine detail such as scratches, bolts and carving without adding polygons.
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- PBR (Physically Based Rendering)Physically based rendering (PBR) is a way of describing materials with physically meaningful values, such as base colour, metalness and roughness, so they look correct under any lighting.
- PhotogrammetryPhotogrammetry is a technique that reconstructs a 3D model from many overlapping photographs of an object or place, by matching features between images.
- Point cloudA point cloud is a collection of points in 3D space, often millions of them, usually captured by a laser scanner, LiDAR sensor or photogrammetry software.
- Polygon countPolygon count, usually measured in triangles, is the number of faces that make up a 3D model. It's the main measure of a model's geometric weight.
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- RetopologyRetopology is the process of rebuilding a model's surface with a new, clean and efficient arrangement of polygons, usually on top of a dense sculpt, scan or generated mesh.
- RiggingRigging is the process of adding a skeleton of bones and controls to a 3D model, and binding the mesh to it, so the model can be posed and animated.
S
- STLSTL is a simple file format that describes a 3D surface as a list of triangles. It's the most widely supported format for 3D printing.
- Subdivision surfaceA subdivision surface is a smooth, high-resolution surface computed from a simple low-poly cage by repeatedly splitting and averaging its faces.
- SVGSVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based format that describes images as shapes, paths and text rather than pixels, so they stay sharp at any size.