3D Game Development Terminology

Most visible objects in a 3D scene are made up of polygon meshes – characters, terrains, buildings, etc. A mesh is a grid-like structure that represents a complex shape. The advantage of a mesh is that it is mathematically simple enough to render in real time, and detailed enough to be recognizable.

Every shape is reduced to a number of connected polygons, usually triangles; even round surfaces such as spheres are reduced to a grid of triangles. The polygons' corner points are called vertices. Every vertex is positioned at a coordinate, all vertices together describe the outline of the shape.

You create 3D meshes in tools called mesh editors, e.g in Blender. The jMonkeyEngine can load finished meshes (=models) and arrange them to scenes, but it cannot edit the mesh itself.

Environment Mapping or Reflection Mapping is used to create the impression of reflections and refractions in real time. It’s faster (but less accurate) than the raytracing methods used in offline rendering applications.

You create a Cube Map to represent your environment; Sphere Maps are also possible, but often look distorted. Basically you give the environment map a set of images showing a “360°” view of the background scene – very similar to a skybox. The renderer maps the environment on the texture of the reflective surface, which results in an acceptable “glass/mirror/water” effect. Just like a skybox, the reflection map is static, so dynamic things (such as the player walking) are not part of the reflection. (!)

See also: Water.

MIP Map means that you provide one texture in two or three resolutions in one file (MIP = “multum” in parvo = “many” in one). Depending on how close (or far) the camera is, the engine automatically renders a more (or less) detailed texture for the object. Thus objects look detailed at close up, but also look good when viewed from far away. Good for everything, but requires more time to create and more space to store textures. If you don’t provide custom ones, the jMonkeyEngine creates basic MIP maps automatically as an optimization.

A procedural texture is generated from repeating one small image, plus some pseudo-random, gradient variations (called Perlin noise). Procedural textures look more natural than static rectangular textures, and they look less distorted on spheres. On big meshes, their repetitiveness is much less noticeable than with tiled seamless textures. Procedural textures are ideal for irregular large-area textures like grass, soil, rock, rust, and walls. Use the jMonkeyEngine SDK NeoTexture plugin to create them.

See also: Blender: Every Material Known to Man

To simplify, PBR attempts to deliver photo realistic images based off the texture of a material and how light becomes more reflective the more you view it at an angle. In other words, it’s based on real physics. Everything has a reflection but accurately representing that reflection in video graphics has been mostly done with tricks prior to the introduction of PBR. Tricks as in using different lighting images (specular maps) overlaying color images (diffuse maps) to simulate shininess.

With PBR, a materials “Metalness” (conductive) or "Dielectric" (insulator) and "Roughness" or lack thereof will determine how light gets reflected. For example, metal (Metalness) is smoother than dirt (dielectric) so has a higher reflection whereas the dirt would tend to absorb the light, just as in real world conditions.

The technique described above is known as the “Metalness Workflow”. Where you are deciding whether the texture is metallic or dielectric and defining the amount of roughness for the texture.

There is another workflow known as the “Specular Workflow”. In the metalness workflow the albedo map is used for both diffuse color and specular color. “Specular Workflow” uses a specular color map instead. In this workflow, the albedo map is the diffuse color, the specular map is the specular color, and you have a gray scale gloss map that is the same as the roughness map. The workflow is very similar to the old techniques used for making materials.

This has been a brief introduction to PBR. In reality, it requires a significant amount of learning to implement correctly. Read the three part series of articles called, Physically Based Rendering, that can be found under the “Material, light, Shadow” topic for a more in depth explanation of PBR textures. This is a must read for any serious jME developer.

See also: Understanding Metalness.

You should also conduct many searches on the subject, especially ones related to your modeling tool of choice.

An animated character has an armature: An internal skeleton (Bones) and an external surface (Skin). The Skin is the visible outside of the character and it includes clothing. The Bones are not visible and are used to interpolate (calculate) the morphing steps of the skin.

JME3, the game engine, only loads and plays your recorded animations. You must use a tool (such as Blender) to set up (rig, skin, and animate) a character.

In the JME3 application, you register animated models to the Animation Controller. The controller object gives you access to the available animation sequences. The controller has several channels, each channel can run one animation sequence at a time. To run several sequences, you create several channels, and run them in parallel.

Coordinates represent a location in a coordinate system. Coordinates are relative to the origin at (0,0,0). In 3D space, you need to specify three coordinate values to locate a point: X (right), Y (up), Z (towards you). Similarly, -X (left), -Y (down), -Z (away from you). In contrast to a vector (which looks similar), a coordinate is a location, not a direction.

A vector has a length and a direction, like an arrow in 3D space. A vector starts at a coordinate (x1,y1,z1) or at the origin, and ends at the target coordinate (x2,y2,z2). Backwards directions are expressed with negative values.

Example: