Blender |Blender Reference Manual.pdf

8/9/2019 Blender |Blender Reference Manual.pdf

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Blender Reference Manual

Getting Started

Editors

Data System Modeling Physics Modifiers Rigging Animation Rendering Compositing Motion Tracking Grease Pencil Game Engine Extending Blender User Preferences Troubleshooting

Glossary

About this Manual

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Glossary

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Glossary

Active

Blender makes a distinction between selected and active. Only one Object or itemcan be active at any given time.

Actuator

A logic brick that acts like a muscle of a lifeform. It can move the object, or also

make a sound.

Aliasing

Rendering artifacts in the form of jagged lines.

http://www.blender.org/manual/contents.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/getting_started/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/editors/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/data_system/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/physics/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/modifiers/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/animation/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/render/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/composite_nodes/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/motion_tracking/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/grease_pencil/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/extensions/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/preferences/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/troubleshooting/index.html


http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html

http://www.blender.org/manual/about/index.html




http://www.blender.org/manual/_sources/glossary/index.txt


http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-logic-brick







http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html




















Alpha Channel

Additional channel in 2D image for transparency.

Ambient Light

It’s light that doesn’t seem to come from a specific source, but is just there. In the

real world, this is caused by stray photons bouncing around and occasionally

ricocheting under the desk. Since the light doesn’t come from anywhere, all sides ofan object are illuminated equally, and it won’t have any shading on it.

Ambient Occlusion

A ratio of how much ambient light a surface point would be likely to receive. It

simulates a huge dome light surrounding the entire scene. If a a surface point isunder a foot or table, it will end up much darker than the top of someone’s head or

the tabletop.

Animation

Simulation of motion.

Anti-aliasingSee oversampling .

Armature

A single-member class of primitive object. It consists of bones. Its primary use is in

development of animated, articulated objects.

Automerge

Editing mode working with Snap-tool. It removes the doubles when you snap 2

vertices.

Axis

A reference line depicting the direction of one of the coordinates in any coordinatesystem.

Bevel

Operation to chamfer or bevel edges of an object.

Bone

Each of the segments that make up an armature.

Boolean

Operation that takes 2 meshes. There 3 types: union, intersection and difference.

Order of meshes is important for difference operation. With A and B as the meshes:

Difference (A - B): the inner part of B is substracted from the inner part of A.

Union: the inner parts of both meshes A and B are combined.

Intersect: only inner parts both meshes have in common are kept.

These operations take care of inner and outer parts of meshes (given by normals).

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-oversampling



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-bone



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-armature








Bounding Box

Box that encloses the shape of an object. The box is aligned with the local space of

the object.

Bump Mapping

Is a technique where at each pixel, a perturbation to the surface normal of the object

being rendered is looked up in a texture map and applied before the illuminationcalculation is done.

Bézier

It’s a computer graphics technique for generating and representing curves.

Caustics

In optics is a bundle of light rays. For example a caustic effect may be seen when

light refracts or reflects through some refractive or reflective material, to create amore focused, stronger light on the final location. Such amplification, especially of

sunlight, can burn – hence the name. A common situation when caustics are visible

is when some light points on glass. There is a shadow behind the glass, but alsothere is a stronger light spot. Nowadays, almost every advanced rendering system

supports caustics. Some of them even support volumetric caustics. This is

accomplished by raytracing the possible paths of the light beam through the glass,accounting for the refraction, reflection, etc.

Collapse

Is a tool used to remove redundant edges from geometry.

Color Blend Modes

Ways in which 2 colors can be blended in computer graphics.

See Wikipedia’s Blend Modes article for more information.

Concave face

Face in which one vert is inside a triangle formed by other vertices of the face.

Constraint

Tt is any factor that limits the performance of a system with respect to its goal.

Control

cage

Mesh used in subsurf modeling to control the shape of the mesh.

Controlle

r

A logic brick that acts like the brain of a lifeform. It makes decisions to activate

muscles (actuators), either using simple logic or complex Python scripts.

C

o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blend_modes






http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-actuator








n

v

e

x

f

ac

e

Not concave face. Opposite of concave face.

C

o

p

l

a

n

a

rItems that are in the same plane in 3D space.

C

r

e

a

s

e

It’s used to define the sharpness of edges and faces of subsurfaced meshes.

C

u

r

v

e

It’s a class of objects. In Blender there are Bézier curves and NURBS curves.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-concave-face



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-bezier



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-nurbs








It’s the distance in front of and behind the subject which appears to be in focus. Forany given lens setting, there is only one distance at which a subject is precisely in

focus, but focus falls off gradually on either side of that distance, so there is a region

in which the blurring is tolerable. This region is greater behind the point of focusthan it is in front, as the angle of the light rays change more rapidly; they approach

being parallel with increasing distance.

It’s even, directed light coming off a surface. For most things, the diffuse light is themain lighting we see. Diffuse light comes from a specific direction or location, and

creates shading. Surfaces facing towards the light source will be brighter, while

surfaces facing away from the light source will be darker.

Is a light that has a specific direction, but no location. It seems to come from aninfinitely far away source, like the sun. Surfaces facing the light are illuminated

more than surfaces facing away, but their location doesn’t matter. A Directional

Light illuminates all objects in the scene, no matter where they are.



Uses a greyscale heightmap, like Bump Mapping , but the image is used to

physically move the vertices of the mesh at render time. This is of course onlyuseful if the mesh has large amounts of vertices.

The Doppler effect is the change in pitch that occurs when a sound has a velocity

relative to the listener. When a sound moves towards the listener the pitch will rise.When going away from the listener the pitch will drop. A well known example is

the sound of an car passing by.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-bump-mapping






Blender uses two buffers (images) to draw the interface in. The content of one buffer is displayed, while drawing occurs on the other buffer. When drawing is

complete, the buffers are switched.

Straight segment (line) that connects 2 vertices, and can be part of a face.

Chain of edges belonging to consecutive quads. An edge loop ends at a pole or a

boundary. Otherwise it is cyclic.

Path of all edges along a face loop that share 2 faces belonging to that loop.

Kind of object that cannot hold any geometry.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-vertex



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-face



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-edge



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-quad






http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-face-loop











Method of calculating reflections. It involves rendering images at strategic positionsand applying them as textures to the mirror. Now in most cases obsoleted by

Raytracing, which though slower is easier to use and more accurate.

It’s a tool used to create more geometry into the mesh. It is a very commonly used

tool.

Mesh element that defines a piece of surface. It consists of 3 or more edges.

Chain of consecutive quads. A face loop stops at a triangle or Ngon (which don’t belong to the loop), or at a boundary. Otherwise it’s cyclic.







http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-triangle



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-ngon









An object’s geometric center coincides with the geometric center of its bounding box.

Is a superset of radiosity and ray tracing. The goal is to compute all possible light

interactions in a given scene, and thus obtain a truly photo realistic image. All

combinations of diffuse and specular reflections and transmissions must beaccounted for. Effects such as colour bleeding and caustics must be included in a

global illumination simulation.



Used to achieve smooth lighting on low-polygon surfaces without the heavycomputational requirements of calculating lighting for each pixel. The technique

was first presented by Henri Gouraud in 1971.

HDRI is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than

normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide

range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the

deepest shadows. The use of high dynamic range imaging in computer graphics has been popularised by the work of Paul Debevec.



It’s a property of transparent materials. When a light ray travels through the same

volume it follows a straight path. However if it passes from one transparent volumeto another, it bends. The angle by which the ray is bent can be determined by the

IOR of the materials of both volumes.

Method of calculating new data between points of known value, like keyframes.

Curve that holds the animation values of a specific property.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-keyframe






Is the process of determining the movement of interconnected segments of a body

or model. Using ordinary Kinematics on a hierarchically structured object you canfor example move the shoulder of a puppet. The upper and lower arm and hand will

automatically follow that movement. IK will allow you to move the hand and let thelower and upper arm go along with the movement. Without IK the hand would

come off the model and would move independently in space.

It’s a frame in an animated sequence drawn or otherwise constructed directly by theuser. In classical animation, when all frames were drawn by animators, the senior

artist would draw these frames, leaving the “in between” frames to an apprentice. Now, the animator creates only the first and last frames of a simple sequence

(keyframes); the computer fills in the gap.

Is a tool used to cut meshes to get more geometry.

A visibility flag for objects.



A graphical representation of a functional unit in Blender’s game logic. A Logic brick can be aSensor , Controller or Actuator .

Manifold meshes, called also water tight meshes, define a closed non-self-

intersecting volume(see also non-manifold ).

Type of object consisting of vertices, edges and faces.

It’s the simulation of the phenomenon that occurs when we perceive a rapidly

moving object. The object appears to be blurred because of our persistence ofvision. Doing motion blur makes computer animation appear more realistic.

It’s a face that contains more than four vertices.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-sensor



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-controller






http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-non-manifold

























Animation technique that allows the animator to edit motions as a whole, not just

the individual keys. Nonlinear animation allows you to combine, mix, and blend

different motions to create entirely new animations.

Non-Manifold meshes essentially define geometry which cannot exist in the real

world. This kind of geometry is not suitable for several types of operations,

specially those where knowing the volume (inside/outside) of the object is

important (refraction, fluids, booleans, or 3D printing, to name a few). There are

several types of non-manifold geometry:

Borders and holes (edges with only a single connected face), as faces have no

thickness.

Edges and vertices not belonging to any face (wire).

Edges connected to 3 or more faces (interior faces). Vertices belonging to faces that are not adjoining (e.g. 2 cones sharing the

vertex at the apex).

Use 3D View ‣ Select ‣ Non Manifold to select these types of non-manifold

geometry in a mesh.



The normalized vector perpendicular to the plane that a face lies in. Each face has

its own normal.

Is a computer graphics technique for generating and

representing curves and surfaces.

Is similar to Bump mapping , but instead of the image being a greyscale heightmap,

the colours define in which direction the normal should be shifted, the 3 colour

channels being mapped to the 3 directions X, Y and Z. This allows more detail andcontrol over the effect.











Reference point of an object for positioning (translating), orienting (rotating), andscaling an it. In most cases, this center is at the geometric center of the object

(geometric center of its bounding box). However, an object’s center may be offset

from the geometric center.

Is the technique of minimizing aliasing when representing a high-resolution signal

at a lower resolution.

Also called Anti-Aliasing.

It’s a technique that simulate certain kinds of fuzzy phenomena, which are

otherwise very hard to reproduce with conventional rendering techniques. Common

examples include fire, explosions, smoke, sparks, falling leaves, clouds, fog, snow,dust, meteor tails, stars and galaxies, or abstract visual effects like glowing trails,

magic spells. Also used for fur, grass or hair.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-aliasing






Local illumination model that can produce a certain degree of realism in three-

dimensional objects by combining three elements: diffuse, specular and ambient foreach considered point on a surface. It has several assumptions - all lights are points,

only surface geometry is considered, only local modelling of diffuse and specular,specular colour is the same as light colour, ambient is a global constant.

It’s a reference point used by many mesh manipulation tools.

It’s a vertex in which three or five or more edges are connected to. A vertex

connected to one, two or four edges, is not a pole.

Is a basic object that can be used as a basis for modeling more complicated objects.



Computer generated (generic) textures. Procedural textures can be configured via parameters.

Used to alter existing model in a more organic way. When elements are moved

interactively, neighbouring elements are also moved depending on their distance

and the defined parameters.

It’s a face that contains exactly four vertices.







It’s a more accurate but also more process-intensive technique than raytracing, thatcalculates patterns of light and shadow for rendering graphics images from three-

dimensional models. One of the many different tools which can simulate diffuse

lighting in Blender.

Rendering technique that works by tracing the path taken by a ray of light through

the scene, and calculating reflection, refraction, or absorption of the ray whenever it

intersects an object in the world. More accurate than scanline, but much slower.

It’s the change in direction of a wave due to a change in velocity. It happens whenwaves travel from a medium with a given index of refraction to a medium with

another. At the boundary between the media, the wave changes direction; its

wavelength increases or decreases but frequency remains constant.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-scanline



http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-index-of-refraction







Are part of a keyframe animation system that operates on vertex level objects. Each

key is stored as a morph target such that several keys may be blended together toachieve complex mesh animation. Facial expressions, speech, and other detailed

animated keyframed movements can be created within mesh-based models.

Proccess of generating an image out of a 3D model on a computer.

Rendering technique. Much faster than raytracing , but allows fewer effects, such asreflections, refractions, motion blur and focal blur.

A logic brick that acts like a sense of a lifeform. It reacts to touch, vision, collision

etc.

Process of altering the color of an object/surface in the 3D scene, based on its angleto lights and its distance from lights to create a photorealistic effect.

http://www.blender.org/manual/glossary/index.html#term-raytracing










Defines how faces are shaded. Face can be either solid (faces are rendered flat) or

smooth (faces are smoothed by interpolating the normal on every point of the face).

Refers to the highlights on reflective objects.







Mechanism of light transport in which light penetrates the surface of a translucentobject, is scattered by interacting with the material, and exits the surface at a

different point. All non-metallic materials are translucent to some degree. In

particular, materials such as marble, skin, and milk are extremely difficult tosimulate realistically without taking subsurface scattering into account.

It’s used to add more geometry to a mesh. It creates new vertices on subdividededges, new edges between subdivisions and new faces based on new edges. If new

edges cross a new vertex is created on their crossing point.

Is the tool which subdivides your model at render-time, without affecting your meshat design-time.

Also called: Subsurf .



A texture specifies visual patterns on surfaces and simulates physical surfacestructure.

It’s a face with exactly 3 vertices.

A UV map defines a relation between the surface of a 3 dimensional mesh and and a

planar 2D texture. In detail, each face of the mesh is mapped to a corresponding

face on the texture. It is possible and often common practice to map several faces ofthe mesh to the same or overlapping areas of the texture.

It’s a point in 3D space containing a location. It may also have a defined color.

Vertices are the terminating points of edges.















Term used for uploading geometry to the graphics cards memory for improved

performance.

See Wikipedia’s Vertex Buffer Object article for more information.

Vertices can be grouped together so that certain operations can work on specific

groups.

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