Glossary

From Terragen Documentation from Planetside Software
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B

bucket
When TG2 renders it divides the image up into buckets or tiles. Each bucket is rendered separately, allowing multiple buckets to be rendered at once. It also allows memory to be used more efficiently.

D

DEM
DEM stands for Digital Elevation Model. A DEM is similar to a heightfield. DEMs are normally generated from measurements of a planet's surface.
displace
displacement
Literally, to change the position of something. In graphics terminology to displace a surface is to modify its geometric (3D) structure using reference data of some kind. For example, a grayscale image might be taken as input, with black areas indicating no displacement of the surface, and white indicating maximum displacement. In Terragen 2 displacement is used to create all terrain by taking heightfield or procedural data as input and using it to displace the normally flat sphere of the planet.

H

heightfield
heightmap
A heightmap or heightfield is a raster image used to store values, usually surface elevation data.

L

luminance
TG2 converts RGB colours to greyscale by taking the luminance of the colour. This is essentially the brightness of the colour.

P

parameter
A parameter is an individual setting in a node parameter view which controls some aspect of the node.

R

raster image
In computer graphics, a raster image, or bitmap, is a dot matrix data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium.

S

scalar
A scalar is a single number. 1, 200.45, -45, -0.2 are all examples of scalar values.

V

vector
A vector is a set of three scalars, normally representing X, Y and Z coordinates. It also commonly represents rotation, where the values are pitch, heading and bank.