Modern Graphics Terms And Definitions

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Pixel: Today's systems divide the display screen into millions of small dots, arranged in rows and columns. A pixel (Picture Element) is the tiniest dot that makes up the picture on the computer screen. The color and intensity of each dot is individually chosen. (Pixels are square in Pictures and rectangular in Videos)

Texture: The feel of a surface or a fabric.

Texel: A Texel (Texture Element) is the base unit of some texture.

Polygon: A closed plane figure made up of several line segments that are joined together.

Rendering: The process by which the image is generated as pixels from some high-level language.

Texture Mapping: By this some texture is applied to a 3-D surface like a wall, sky to give them realism.

Antialiasing: By this the jaggies are reduced from the rendering being generated on a computer graphics system.

Alpha Blending: This technique helps to produce effects like smoke, glass or water in a 3-D environment. Today's graphics hardware supports 32-bit colors; three color components (red, green and blue) and an alpha component. The alpha component determines how much transparent the pixel would be.

Anisotropic Filtering: This is an advanced technique to improve the quality of far away objects. For example, a road that extends to the horizon.

Bump Mapping: A shading technique that gives roughness and wrinkles to the 3-D surface. The sea & water waves are possible because of this technique.

Mipmapping: Multiple versions of 3-D textures are generated with varying detail levels. Before the image is displayed on screen a version is choosen and applied to the corrosponding 3D object depending on the size of the object on the final rendered image..

Transform & Lighting: Lighting adds to the realism of some scene. Without proper lighting a sunny day would appear dark. Transforms are needed because 3D objects like a person has movement & perspective. Hardware based Transform and Lighting engines are a must for today's gamer.