This dictionary defines and describes all technical expressions related to Primstar and Blender. This dictionary applies to our entire Documentation set:

Vertex:

 a point in 3D space:Note: A point is defined by its 3 axis coordinates x,y,z. In blender the z-axis points “upwards”, hence when you are in top view, you see the x-y plane (x from left to right, y from bottom to top)

Edge:

 a line in 3D space between 2 vertices.Note: A line between 2 vertices is always straight. You might be tempted to think that Blender also supports bended lines. For example when you use a Subdivision modifier then the lines between two visible vertices look like they are bended. But this is because the modifier actually subdivides the edges by adding more vertices.

Path:

 a series of connected edges.Note: Pathes are always straight and have no junctions and no crossings.

Closed Path:

 a path where the start-point and the endpoint are connected.

Corner:

 The vertex where two (or more) edges connect.

Polygon:

 A plane figure that is bounded by a Closed path.  

Face:

 Synonym for Polygon. Sometimes also used as Synonym for Quad (see below)

Tri:

 Short for Triangle, a Face defined by a closed path with 3 connected Edges.Note: Tris are the only Polygons which always are absolute planar.

Quad:

 Short for Quadrilateral, a Face defined by a closed path with 4 connected edges.
Note: Quads are not necessarily planar! Quads can always be constructed from 2 Tris. But take care! the construction can always be done in 2 ways and the results look different! See also the video I love Quads.

N-gon:

 A Face defined by a closed path with n connected edges. N-Gons can be constructed from n-2 Tris.Note: N-gons are supported by Blender since Release 2.63.

UV-Map:

 Map which relates the faces of the mesh to areas on a 2-dimensional image.Important: The UV-Map is not(!) the image, but a list of face-pairs. The grid lines shown in the UV image editor are a visual representation of the UV map.

Surface-Texture:

 2-dimensional image for storing texture information for one surface of an object.Note: “Surface” is a synonym for “Face” in SL-notation.

Surface:

 Part of a Mesh associated to one single Surface-Texture. (equivalent to “Face” in “SL-notation”)Note: For Meshes a Surface does not necessarily need to be a contiguous area of faces.

Mesh:

 A 3D-representation of a primitive as a set of Polygons and optional up to 8 Surface-Textures.

Sculptie:

 Mesh with a fixed UV-map and an associated Sculpt-Map for baking, and optional one additional Surface-Texture.

Primitive:

 procedural Mesh defined (generated) by use of “Prim Parameters” (equivalent to SL-Primitives) and optional up to 6 additional Surface-Textures.

Sculpt-Map:

 2 dimensional image for storing vertex locations of a sculptie (used with UV-Map).

Blender related definitions

Object:

 any Object in the Blender scene.

Mesh Object:

 Object with mesh-data.

“sculptie”:

 UV Map for baking the Sculptie’s location information.

“UVMap”:

 UV Map for the Sculptie’s Surface-Texture.Note: a primitive can have more than one UVMap. The additional ones are by default named UVMap.001, UVMap.002, but UV Maps can be renamed as you like.