Threekit 3D & AR Dictionary
When I started at Threekit, one of our project managers relayed a situation where a client wanted to adjust a garment's "material" on a short timeline, leading to several days of delays as our 3D team tried frantically to edit the 3D materials used in the garment. It turns out that the client was simply trying to explain that the fabric folds did not look like their reference photograph – what they called a "material," we would call a "fabric."
In a humbling reminder that not every industry uses the same language, this experience also encouraged us to publish a dictionary to help any potential clients reference commonly-used 3D and AR terms.
Dictionary:
Attribute:
A selection or choice that users may make inside the Configurator.
Attribute Value:
A potential value of an attribute, e.g. If Attribute A has potential values 1, 2, and 3, each of those values (1, 2, and 3) is an Attribute Value.
Configurator:
An application that guides a user through the process of designing and selecting attributes of a product.
Documentation:
Our online help and training materials for the Online Services accessible via https://forum.clara.io and https://clara.io/docs/ and https://clara.io/learn/sdk/api
Material:
The physical nature of a configurable part. This can refer to things such as color, texture, metallic nature, or glow. This does not refer to anything that changes the underlying shape of a part (see: 3D Asset).
Parametric Dependency:
A scenario where a configuration option requiring modification of a particular product part requires a corresponding change to the geometry of other product parts, which are otherwise unrelated to the configuration option in question.
PBR (Physically Based Rendering):
A specific shading model in computer graphics that seeks to render graphics in a way that more accurately models the flow of light in the real world. This technique is used by default on our platform.
Shot:
A render or series of renders using a particular camera angle, lighting and scene setup.
Single-Page Application:
A single page UI that dynamically updates based on user selections.
User Interface:
The means by which the user and the configurator interact in the web browser.
Visual Assets:
The set of all 3D Assets and Materials.
Vray Render:
A single 3D rendering of a given product and its associated configuration performed using the ThreeKit VRay rendering servers.
2K Resolution:
A generic term for display devices or content having horizontal resolution of approximately 2,000 pixels.
3D Model:
Any individual model that will be referenced as part of a product being configured. Depending on the complexity of the product, this asset may represent the entire product or a single configurable piece.
3D Player:
The layered image viewer that displays the 2D renders.