There are many industry terms used on the Digital Dailies postings which may seem foreign to those not directly involved in computer animation. All professions (lawyers, doctors, publishers, etc.) have their own jargon and the field of animation is no exception. Since the information posted is what is actually exchanged by those working on the feature film, Delgo, you will undoubtedly be confused by some of the nomenclature. In an effort to minimize the confusion, we have constructed a small glossary of terms that you may see used on the postings. If there are any terms we inadvertently left out, please let us know and we will add them.

Bump map - A texture map that modifies the surface normals to provide the appearance of bumps on the surface.

CV - Control Vertex. A CV is a point that controls the shape of a curve or surface.

Depth map - A depth map is commonly used when referring to shadows and how they are calculated. It is a type of shadow map generation that outputs an image map of a determined size from the view of each light. This map is then projected back through the light to make the shadows "appear" on the rest of the objects.

Expressions - a command or series of commands that creates relationships between different elements in a 3D scene, usually to automate animation or properties. for example, a simple expression can make a wheel rotate automatically as a 3D car moves down a road.

Geometry - A 3D model or part of a 3D model. The computer uses mathematic geometry to create the illusion of shape and depth. If at least 3 points in 3D space are connected, the computer can compute geometry.

Keyframe - A frame in the animation timeline where the computer is told to remember certain information.

Influence objects - objects that can be used to aid in the deformation of other objects, creating effects like bulging muscles.

Locators - a 3D marker in space, it acts as a reference point for calculations or a handle to control other objects and values.

Maps - A map is a digital file that can be attached to shaders, lights, etc. Most common types are texture map, and shadow map.

Maya - The name of the off-the-shelf software we are using to create our film. Made by Alias/Wavefront.

Model - a 3 dimensional object as defined by 3d software. The process of sculpting digitally is called "modeling".

Nurbs - Non-uniform rational B-spline: curves, patches, surfaces, and so on. NURBS are a superset of conics, splines, Beziers. They are parametric polynomial curves, and are particularly suited for modeling in 3D as they provide excellent continuity with a minimum number of control points.

Particles - Particles are points you display as dots, streaks, spheres, blobby surfaces, or other items. You can animate the display and movement of particles with various techniques, for instance, keys, expressions, and fields such as gravity.

Polys or polygons - A polygon is an n-sided shape defined by a group of ordered vertices and the edges that are defined between pairs of those vertices.

Shaders - A shader specifies the material and lighting of a surface for rendering.

Specular - an aspect of a shader type that defines the color and nature of a highlight.

Subdivisions - numerical factor that determines the density that a surface is calculated at. Higher subdivision amounts allow more detailed contouring.

Surface Normals - In polygonal modeling, a normal refers to a directional line perpendicular to a surface.

Tesselation - the general amount of polygons in an object. If a model does not have high enough tesselation it may appear jagged.

UV - A UV reference is similar to geographic references--such as a street address or a pair of latitude and longitude coordinates--this allows Maya(our software package) to identify the appropriate location when projecting a texture map onto the object.

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