# 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)