Get to know key 3D concepts (and their definitions) for selling the Substance 3D Collection toolset.
For more information, check out the full glossary for each Substance 3D app:
Asset—Objects that make up a 3D scene. Meshes, materials, lights, and images are all assets.
CAD (computer-aided design)—CAD models are almost always intended for 3D designs that will become physical objects, manufactured, or 3D printed, as opposed to models that stay inside the virtual world.
Camera—Substance 3D Stager enables users to place multiple cameras that can be used to render a scene from a number of angles. Users look through cameras using the viewport to precisely frame their content.
Environment light—An image that is used to compute the lighting of a scene. Environment lights are usually created from high dynamic range (HDR) images. Non-HDR images are not physically accurate when used as environment lights.
Geometry—The total points of an object. For example, a basic cube or box has eight points. Geometry can be composed of anything with one or more points.
Graph—A chain or network of nodes meant to generate one or more outputs, like a texture or material. Graphs are built by connecting nodes in sequence and can be used to process image data and numerical data. In the Substance 3D ecosystem, the graph is only used inside Designer.
GPU (graphical processing unit)—A chip that is efficient at performing operations commonly used in 2D and 3D graphics. GPUs are commonly found on video adapters. (Note: Not every device has a powerful GPU, for example an Apple MacBook).
Image to Material—Image to Material is a feature of Substance 3D Sampler that enables users to convert an image or photograph into a material. Image to Material helps speed up this process compared to manual methods.
Material—A collection of information that helps define the properties of whatever surface it is applied to. Often this information is related to how light interacts with a surface such as roughness or color. It can also be used to achieve other effects, such as displacement or masking.
Mesh—A 3D object. In most applications meshes are made of vertices, edges, and polygons. Parametric meshes can be created with Substance 3D Designer.
Nodes—The building blocks of graphs. Nodes generally accept one or more inputs, perform some kind of operation on that information, and then output the modified data. Nodes are the foundation of programs like Substance 3D Designer, Houdini, and Nuke, as well as node-based shaders.
Nondestructive—A workflow that enables users to alter content in a way that can be changed or undone without permanently altering the properties of the content. Layers, filters, nodes, and masks are all tools in Substance 3D applications that allow users to work nondestructively to tweak and adjust their results endlessly, while preserving the original content.
- Parameter—An adjustable value that can be used to modify an asset. Parameters can be used to control any number of things. For example, many materials contain parameters to adjust things like roughness or transparency. Parametric meshes hold parameters that enable users to adjust their size and proportions as well as many other options.
- Parametric model—A 3D mesh that can be modified within Substance 3D Stager and Designer by using parameters to control aspects of the mesh. The parameters for each parametric model depend on the mesh, so one parametric model might have a bevel parameter while another does not. Parametric models can only be created in Substance 3D Designer for now.
Parametric material—A 3D material that can be modified within Substance 3D Painter, Designer, Sampler, or Stager by using parameters to control aspects of the material. The parameters for each parametric material depend on the material. Parametric materials can only be created in Substance 3D Designer for now.
Physically based rendering (PBR) or Physically Based Shading (PBS)—A model in computer graphics that tries to render graphics by using real-world physical properties.
Procedural—An image or model that is completely generated from mathematical formulas. Unlike static, hand-painted bitmaps or hand-modeled meshes, procedural methods let users change and modify data in much more dynamic ways.
Render—An image created using a renderer.
Renderer—A program built to process 3D information such as lights, meshes, and materials to create 2D images.
Shader—A shader defines the behavior of a material when it receives lighting information. Some shaders can be simple (like toon shading) or more advanced (like skin shading that simulates light absorption in a surface).
Substance material—Procedural materials made using Substance 3D tools. Most Substance materials have unique parameters that can be modified to customize the final result.
Texture—A 2D image made for use in 3D. Textures can be grayscale, meaning only one channel is being used, or colored, meaning multiple channels are being used. Materials are made from a collection of textures with each texture having a specific role, such as color, roughness, and metallic.
Unwrapping—The process of unwrapping 3D geometry into a flat 2D UV space for the purposes of texture mapping.
UV—A representation of a 3D model in 2D space. UVs are used to map 2D images from 2D space onto the surface of the model in 3D space. The process of creating UVs is often described as cutting seams into the model to unfold and flatten it.
Viewport—The place where the 3D or 2D scene is displayed on the screen. The viewport makes it possible to interact with the tools and the 3D mesh by controlling the camera.