Plain-English definitions of architectural rendering terms.

Soft contact shadows where surfaces meet.

The ratio of an image's width to its height.

A family of parallel projections including isometric, dimetric, and trimetric.

The aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in an image.

Focused light patterns produced by reflection or refraction.

How warm or cool a light source appears, measured in Kelvin.

The range of distance that appears in focus in an image.

The matte component of how a surface reflects light.

Dots per inch — print resolution measure.

Light that bounces between surfaces, not just direct light.

High Dynamic Range — handling brighter brights and darker darks.

Image-Based Lighting — using a 360° image as the light source.

A parallel projection where all three axes share equal scale.

A texture that fakes surface bumps without changing geometry.

Perspective with a single vanishing point on the horizon.

Ray tracing with full bounce simulation through random sampling.

Pixels per inch — screen resolution measure.

Simulating light by tracing rays from camera to source.

A network of computers used to render images or animations in parallel.

The mirror-like component of how a surface reflects light.

Light passing into a translucent material before exiting.

Compressing HDR brightness into a viewable range.

How a 2D texture is wrapped onto a 3D surface.