View source for 3D Technologies and Solutions

This article describes some terms and solutions used in 3D visualization industry.

=== ART ===

Autodesk RayTracer, physically-based render engine for 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Revit, etc. Uses path tracing on CPUs for rendering.

=== ATF ===

Autodesk translation framework, framework for data exchange.

=== BRDF ===

Bidirectional reflectance distribution function.

=== BSDF ===

Bidirectional scattering distribution function. Used as generalization for reflectance and transmittance, e.g. BSDF = BRDF + BTDF.

=== BTDF ===

Bidirectional transmittance distribution function.

=== Hydra (HD) ===

Framework to transport live scene graph data to renderer (originally USD to OpenGL render engine). Open source, developed by Pixar.

=== Irradiance ===

Radiant flux received by a surface per unit area. The unit of irradiance is the watt per square metre (W⋅m<sup>−2</sup>).

[[File:photometry radiometry units.png|480px]]

=== LookdevKit ===

A plugin for Maya which provides some useful shader nodes: math, noise, mix, etc.

=== LookdevX ===

A node-based material editor for USD assets which comes with Maya.

Not to be confused with LookdevKit.

=== LTC ===

Linearly transformed cosines, a set of distributions to render area lights. 

=== Mental Ray ===

Deprecated ray tracing renderer by NVIDIA. Was used in older versions of 3ds Max, Maya, Revit, Softimage, etc. Replaced by Arnold.

=== MetaSL ===

Outdated shading language which was used in 3ds Max (before 2016) and Mental Mill software.

=== Nitrous ===

3ds Max viewport system.

=== OGS ===

Open graphics system, viewport renderer used in Autodesk software (3ds Max, Maya, AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, Fusion, Infraworks, Navisworks, Recap, etc).

Not to be confused with OpenSceneGraph (OSG).

=== Radiance ===

Radiant flux emitted, reflected, transmitted, or received by a given surface, per unit solid angle per unit projected area. The unit of radiance is watt per steradian per square metre (W·sr<sup>−1</sup>·m<sup>−2</sup>).

[[File:photometry radiometry units.png|480px]]

=== RapidRT ===

Another name for Autodesk RayTracer renderer (ART).

=== Stingray ===

A discontinued 3D game engine. Also known as 3ds Max Interactive. The shader node system based on Stingray PBS is still supported in 3ds Max, Maya (created via ShaderFX editor).