3D concepts

An outline of 3D graphics concepts.

• Renderer (backend)
  • [[WebGL]]
  • [[OpenGL]]
  • [[Scanline rendering]]
  • [[Raytracer]]
• [[3D Scene]]: a scene combines light, camera, and geometries in a viewable 3D space.
  • [[Scene graph]]: a model of the geometries, lights, cameras in a scene. Typically a tree (though not always).
  • [[3D Coordinates]]
  • [[Skybox]]
  • [[Quaternion]]: math for rotations in 3D space
• [[3D Camera]]
  • [[Field of view]]
  • Near and far [[clipping plane]]: objects outside these bounds won't be rendered.
  • [[Viewing frustum]]: the field-of-view of the camera. Objects outside may not be rendered.
• [[3D Light]]
  • Ambient light (directionless)
  • Directional light (sun)
  • Point light: lightbulb
  • Spotlight
  • Area light (light shape, like a box of light)
  • [[Hemisphere light]]: glowing dome over the scene
  • [[Raytracer]]
• Aspect Ratio
• [[3D Mesh]] / Geometry
  • In [[Three.js]], a Mesh is made up of a Geometry + Material.
  • vertices (points)
  • edges
  • faces (fill)
  • [[Surface normal]]: line that is perpendicular to a face
  • [[NURBS]]: splines like Bezier
  • [[Backface culling]]
• Models: serialized mesh
  • [[3D file formats]] / serializing models
• [[3D material]]: Typically an instance of a shader. Defines how a mesh surface looks and interacts with a light.
  • [[Shader]] / shading
  • [[GLSL]]: shader language.
  • [[PBR]], or physically-based rendering
    • Metalness (shiny)
    • Roughness
  • Specular highlights, reflectivity
  • Diffuse
  • [[Raytracer]]: trace the rays of a raycaster for reflections, shadows.
• [[3D Texture]] skins the mesh
  • [[Texel]]: texture pixel
  • [[Voxel]]
  • [[Texture mapping]]
  • [[UV mapping]]: mapping how texture wraps mesh
  • [[Bump mapping]]: simulate bumps and wrinkles
• Objects (Mesh + material w/ texture (optional))
  • [[3D Group]] can be used to group many objects in the scene graph and move or scale as a group.
  • Child objects (like groups, child objects have a position and rotation relative to the parent)
• Animation
• Interactivity
  • [[Raycaster]]
  • Collision
• [[Point cloud]]: a literal cloud of points

Modeling

• [[Subdivision Surface]]

Etc:

• [[WebGL vs OpenGL]]
• [[HDR Lightprobes with Mirrorball]]

Pathways

Important paths between toolchains:

• Creating models, importing models into game engines.
• Creating shaders, bringing into game engine.
• Creating normal maps and texture maps, bringing into modeling software or game engine.