- Acceleration Structure
- A data structure to optimize ray-primitive intersections in a scene. Often a BVH.
- BRDF
- Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function
- BSDF
- Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function
- BSSRDF
- Bidirectional Scattering-Surface Reflectance Function
- BTDF
- Bidirectional Transmittance Distribution Function
- BTF
- Bidirectional Texture Function
- BVH
- Bounding Volume Hierarchy
- Bounding Volume Hierarchy
- A data structure that envelopes scene geometry into a tree of volumes.
- BxDF
- Bidirectional X (anything) Distribution Function. A catch all term for Bidirectional Distribution Functions.
- Caustics
- When light transmits through a curved surface such as water ripples or a drinking glass and creates patches of light.
- Convergence
- When a frame has rendered to within an error threshold or bias. Usually to an acceptable level of noise.
- GI
- Global Illumination
- Global Illumination
- A method of realistic lighting. Light bounces off of objects and is not only direct lighting.
- Lambertian
- A diffuse matte material
- MC
- Monte Carlo
- Offline
- A rendering method that is not intended for interaction. Render times are less important and can take seconds, minutes, hours, or more. Usually very high quality rendering is the goal.
- Realtime
- A rendering method that is intended for interaction. Usually requires render times in the milliseconds.
- Path Tracing
- A rendering method using ray tracing that approximates the rendering equation by sampling a random subset of all possible light paths between the observer and the scene's light sources.
- PBR
-
1. Physically Based Rendering
2. Physically Based Rendering Book - PBRT
-
1. Physically Based Rendering Book
2. Physically Based Rendering Code - Phong
- Ambient, diffuse, and specular material
- Ray Casting
-
1. A method of rendering that casts primary rays and returns a color.
2. Sending a ray into a scene and intersecting with geometry. - Ray Marching
- A technique of ray tracing that finds the nearest intersection with a distance functon by iterating along a ray until the distance is within an epsilon.
- Ray Tracing
-
1. A method of rendering that casts rays into a scene.
2. Whitted style ray tracing. Cast rays and detect shadow and light rays.
3. Path tracing. - Rendering Equation
- An integral formula that describes a framework of how light interacts with a material while conserving the light entering and leaving.
- SSS
- Subsurface Scattering
- Subsurface Scattering
- When light enters a material, scatters, and exits from another point. Example materials requiring this method to look realistic are human skin, leaves, wax, and milk.
- Stochastic Sampling
- A random subset. Can be used to reduce the total of rays needed to converge a render.