Jargon buster

Shot/take

One continuous camera move

Frame

It can refer to frame composition or a single image from the image sequence that makes up the animation

Resolution

The number of pixels that comprise the image, given by the amount of horizontal by vertical number of pixels

Frame per second (FPS)

Refers to the number of images per second. There are different video standards. The higher the number the more stills per second we have to render 

Codec

Digital video is encoded - compressed to take less space and be suitable for streaming/downloading. Codec is the method of encoding used. The most popular standard right now is the High Efficiency Video Coding or H.264, with a more advanced version H.265 recently made available 

Bitrate

Is the amount of data being transferred per second (Kbps/Mbps), some platforms have bandwidth limitations therefore we can make sure out animations are limited to a certain amount     

Plate

At different stages of the pipeline the meaning changes a bit. For a video compositor this means the raw unedited image or video, for a VFX person it means the raw render and for an editor this means the image sequence. For each one it is the most raw version of the image(sequence) they have before and extra effects, titles or modifications added. 

Blocking (set/pass)

A low-res representation of a set or animation. For example it could be the set made out of blocks to further develop composition or in the case of animation - a rough take of the animation, without smaller details or secondary motion added - the character would slide along instead of walking, no finger or eye motion. 

Look dev

The process of either matching a reference or exploring different possible looks/styles

Green screen

Or chroma key. A green/blue backdrop that would be masked out to later extract or separate live action foreground elements 

Aliasing

Digital images are comprised of a huge amount of square pixels. Describing curves with small squares can be challenging when there isn’t enough resolution, then the human eye can see the jagged edges around the curves. Tome make things more complicated when compositing multiple passes they need to have the same aliasing (or antialiasing - blending of the values of neighbouring pixels to diminish the aliasing effects) so that they match and not introduce further artifacts.

Alpha channel

Digital images have number of channels. Most often colour channels for Red, Green and Blue (RGB) and one extra black and white channel for transparency - Alpha channel. 

Key light

The main light used to illuminate a subject. Does not necessarily mean the strongest. The Sun can be a key light, but in an interior setting it is usually used to provide ambient light. Also in terms of power a Rim light (a light used to provide backlight) is often stronger than the Key. 

Ambient light

Generally the light that comes from the environment.

Animation rig

A structure of objects (bones, helpers etc) to aid animation of objects. For a humanoid character that would be a simplified skeletal structure with joints at the right places. For a hinge that could be a couple bones and helpers restricted in some way to which the wings of the hinge are linked so it moves in a realistic way.

Aspect ratio

The ratio of vertical vs horizontal resolution (number of pixels) of an image. HD (High Def) and FHD (full high def) have resolution of 16:9

There are many different options, like 9:16 (panorama), 1:1 (square) and 2:3 (rectangle). The number in front of the colon is the width of the photo and the number after the colon is the height of the photo. The most common image ratios are 3:2 (or 2:3 if hung vertically) and 4:3 (vertically 3:4).

CCW Crop ratio standards

6000px X 4000px (3:2) Landscape

4000px X 6000px (2:3) Portrait

5000px x 5000px (1:1) Square

Banding

the occurrence of bands of colour on an image, usually where we’d expect smooth gradients of the same shade. This is due to limited bit depth, for example 8bit images have 8 bits per channel which are often not enough to represent the richness of colors in nature. There are techniques to battle this effect like dither.

Render Pass

Rendered images are usually broken down into passes which are put back together at the compositing stage. This is to add finer control of the look and allow for easier modification. For example, passes can be: Diffuse pass, Shadow pass, Lighting pass and many others.

Blue/Green spill

The residual blue or green cast reflected on main live action elements from the chroma key (green/blue screen)

Camera mapping

Footage projected onto 3D geometry in order to recreate the real space and make it possible to seem that it interacts with other 3D objects.

Lookup table (LUT)

LUTs are used to map one colour space onto another. For example, we can download/create a LUT of The Matrix and then apply that look to all our images and be super original.

Depth of field (DOF)

In photography/videography, DOF refers to the depth of the area in focus. The depth of field can be shallow, tiny sliver in focus or wide - when almost everything is in focus all the way to the background.

Dynamic range

Dynamic range refers to the range from darkest blacks to the brightest whites a camera can record without clipping (losing information). If you point phone camera to the clouds after a second it would adapt to capture mostly bright clouds, then quickly point it to the inside the room it would take a second again to adapt to the darkness of the interior. This is because it has limited range and needs to move it along the values to be able to capture either dimly lit or brightly lit images.

Fringing

Fringing is a pronounced edge artifact that occurs between areas of high contrast. (In photography this is purple/green ghosting effect around edges)

Pixelation

Pixelation can occur when there isn’t enough resolution to smoothly represent the image. It often occurs when shooting elements (f.e. flowers) without utilizing the full sensor of the camera, for example shooting from too far. Then later in comping when the flower needs to be a foreground element it often lacks the resolution of the surrounding CG image.

Vignetting

In photography this refers to the darkening of the corners relative to the center of an image due to the camera/lens construction. Rendered images don’t suffer from that, we add it during compositing for artistic purposes.

Gamma

Gamut

HDR

Pre-comp

HDRI

Ambient occlusion

Parallax