OK, folks. Nothing can be done, outside of DAZ to fix the Mac zip file. Starting at 0x1658000 the file is all NULLs. The Central Directory for the zip simply isn't there.
If they had used something OTHER THAN ZIP, we could recover the contents up until the corruption. GZIPed TAR would work better than zip. Ick.
Kendall

Well, change happens. I feel a little daunted at the idea of all my old posts being gone, and having to figure out how a new forum works. I am getting tired of the V2 project. This weeks updates will be the last unless my mood changes. Let me try to do a summary of my freebies.

I have been doing both modeling and texture work in my freebie gallery. Obviously they get better as they get newer, as skill goes up over time. I maintain basically duplicate galleries of freebies at ShareCG and Renderosity.

The link to my gallery at ShareCG is:
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=ArroatCG

The link to my gallery at Renderosity is:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/member.php

The fairly good stuff probably begins about three years ago. An early modeling and texture set for an SF Israeli set. It got a two star rating.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/30681/gallery/11/Poser/Davidic

My next freebie was a free pyramid with a sacrificial altar. It got a five star rating.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/30866/gallery/11/Poser/ArroPyramid01

My next freebie also got a five star rating. Not sure it deserved it. It is a restaraunt set with sliding doors, tables and chairs and some not so great texture outfits for the gen 3 characters.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31153/gallery/11/Poser/ArroXmas2008

My next item got a 3.5 star rating. Though it got nice reviews in the forums here from the pagan community. It is a set of dishes with demonic faces, called covenware.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31295/gallery/11/Poser/Covenware

I continued that theme in the next freebie, a ceremonial magical chamber with a pentagram on the floor. It got four stars.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31478/gallery/11/Poser/Arro-Witches-Chamber

My next freebie was a magic mirror with pose files to change the expressions of the face in the mirror. It was unrated.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31478/gallery/11/Poser/Arro-Witches-Chamber

I then did a set of hand held controllers. Again unrated.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31821/gallery/11/Poser/A-Handful-of-Buttons

A solar disk was next. For some reason it got a five star rating.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/31959/gallery/11/Poser/Solar-Disk

A cross construction kit was next. This is a really good set for making a large variety of crosses for your art. I can't really say enough good about this. It has a very sophisticated set of elements for loading parts of a cross together to make hundreds of different crosses. It also got a five star rating and definitely deserved it.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32111/gallery/11/Poser/Cross-Creation-Kit

My next project was a folding card table. You had one of these while growing up. A standard real world prop. It got nice reviews in the forums here and a five star rating at ShareCG.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32239/gallery/11/Poser/Folding-Card-Table

My next three uploads were a set of textures for the Gen3 characters. These pretty much show my ignorance and lack of skill at the time. They are not useless as base textures to improve on, but I cannot boast about them. They were unrated.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32520/gallery/11/Poser/Second-Skins-Camo-Pack-01

My next upload was another pyramid. It was unrated. This was a stepped pyramid, like early Egyptian and Central American pyramids.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32683/gallery/11/Poser/Arro-Pyramid-Two

My next upload actually showed some talent for texture work. It is a very large set of eye textures for the Gen 3 characters. It got nice comments in the forums here, and five star ratings at ShareCG.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32762/gallery/11/Poser/ArroEyes01

My next project is hardly worth mentioning unless you want a strange geometric scene. It was built with the idea of making everything out of three sided shapes. It was unrated.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32863/gallery/11/Poser/ArroTriad

The next project was inspired by the last one. More or Less. I vaguely recalled that Nostradamus had supposedly used a three legged stool to sit on during his prophesying and had included a three legged stool in that package. This bothered me, because I did know if it was historically accurate or not. So I did some research and found out the details of what kind of items Nostradamus would have used. I then made simple models of all the skrying implements that magicians of his period might have used. It includes a crystal ball, historically accurate wands of the time, a brazier for reading the future in smoke, a bowl of water for that kind of scrying, etc. It got a five star rating.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/32986/gallery/11/Poser/The-Tools-of-Nostradamus

My next freebie was a robot, it comes with a large number of textures so it can be a robot fireman, robot emt, robot police officer, and a large number of pose files for body language, hand language, and kung fu moves. It got a five star rating.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/33153/gallery/11/Poser/B.U.D-Mk01-Mod-A

My next freebie was a collection of robotic tentacles suitable for menacing tentacles in any SF scenario. It was unrated.but has been downloaded a couple of hundred times.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/33289/gallery/11/Poser/Arro-Tentacle-Pack01

My next freebie was a floating eye. It got 3.5 stars. and has been downloaded a couple of hundred times.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/33449/gallery/11/Poser/EyeGur

My next freebie was a floating mouth and tongue. Inspired by memories of rock postes from the 60s, or Mick Jagger or something like that. It got three stars.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/33638/gallery/11/Poser/TunGur

I then began to move on to a major project. The Four Corners project. I had stopped doing work of this sort for a year or two, so I made some mistakes on saving texture files with the models. I also got the alignment of the initial elements a little different than those of later installments. I am not sure if the first two or three parts of the series are worth downloading or not.

The first in the series probalby with the most problems included a pillory style prop for the courtyard. Despite its problems it got 4.5 stars or something.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/42830/gallery/5/3D-Model/4-Corners

Four Corners 2345 is an SF version of the set, probably worth having.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/43180/gallery/11/Poser/4-Corners-2345

Four Corners Horrorobilific is a sacrifical pyaramid version of the project. It included a set of magic manacles for binding sacrifices on the altar.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/43297/gallery/11/Poser/Four-CornersHorrororbilific

I then did a set of poses for the Horrorobilific prop set.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/43438/gallery/11/Poser/Four-Corners-Dark-Rituals

I then bagan a set of Wizard's Towers using the geometries created for the Four Corners set. The towers get better as I go along. There are eleven or twelve of them with terrains, and later on sky domes and total environments. During the set there are uploads of food props, sets of bottles, sets of books, bookshelves, etc. During the series, I did a complete 13 level version of Four Corners keep with five levels of dungeon and 8 levels above the ground and almost all leveles fully furnished with pretty much everything. Barrels, sacks, tables chairs, cart with wheels, tables with food, feast tables, dishes with food on them, a beer barrel with tap and beer flowing out, etc.
They begin here
http://www.sharecg.com/v/43555/gallery/11/Poser/White-Wizards-Tower With the White Wizard's Tower
and end here
http://www.sharecg.com/v/50264/gallery/11/Poser/Dark-Lord-Upgrade with an upgrade for the Dark Lord's Tower.

The Main Keep fully furnished is in three uploads.
Four Corners Keep: Dark Places (The below grounds and dungeon parts.)
http://www.sharecg.com/v/46077/gallery/11/Poser/4-Corners-Keep-Dark-Places 450 downloads.
Four Corners Keep: Commons (The ground level and lower floors, living quarters kitchen, etc.) 284 downloads
http://www.sharecg.com/v/46319/gallery/11/Poser/4-Corners-Keep-Commons
Four Corners Keep: Heights (The upper floors, lord and ladies chambers, knight and squires quarters) 179 Downloads
http://www.sharecg.com/v/46541/gallery/11/Poser/4-Corners-Heights

You should really look at things like the book packs and food packs and wizard gear packs that were uploaded periodically with the larger scenes to see what you might want.

My next item was another set of stocks. This one created to be poseable and with poses to automatically fit it to all the gen2, gen3 and a few other figures. I called it Zero Bondage because it fits the figures in their zeroed positions. Five stars and several hundred downloads.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/50343/gallery/11/Poser/Zero-Bondage
It does not work in poser because of differences in name format in poser and Daz.
So I uploaded a fix for it that works in Poser.
http://www.sharecg.com/v/50682/gallery/11/Poser/Poser-ZBondage

I then began a major project of textures for the Generation 2 figures. I did not want to take work away from peeps trying to make a living at this, but they are all making stuff for the latest figures. The Gen2 are great for a lot of uses, and are inexpensive or free.

You need the first two or three or four packages for each figure, V2, M2, and Apollo, because they include bump maps used in all the subesequent packs for that figure. All the packages are divided into two parts. Part one does not include nudity, part two includes nudity and a large selection of partial nude textures.

As I went along, I did superhero costumes as well as police and other costumes. If you download all the packs, V2 will have superhero outfits for every country in the world, unless I missed one or two by accident. If I missed it, you probably never heard of it. All the figures get superhero costumes for Tibet, the United States, Canada, Mexico, England and France. I finished all the countries of the world and started doing aliens with green and blue and purple skins, pointy ears and alien superhero costumes. All come with civilian clothes, partially dressed, fully dressed, geisha, fishnet, leather, latex, police, maid, nurse, and many, many, more; at least for V2. The males just have partial nudity and leather and latex sex outfits. There are two males for every girl, M2 and Apollo versions of each basic skin tone. All races and nations covered.

They begin on this page of my album.
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=arroatcg&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=17
The first 26 sets of three, one for each letter of the alphabet end here
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=arroatcg&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=6

In the middle somewhere are special items for holidays, ghosts, zombies, etc. Christmas textures for emotiguy, and other things like that, you should look. At the end there are tuxedoes for creeper, daz gorilla, spuggles, and ghost. These are nice, nothing like creeper or the daz gorilla in a tuxedo.

I then began some expansion packs for the characters I had uploaded. These include tattoos, tears, blood tears, runny mascara, bruises, scars, bulletholes, vampire blood lips, and zombie versions of the first twelve characters for V2, M2, and Apollo. The first of these packs for V2 got a five star rating. These are nice, specially since they fit with the earlier character packs, but don't require them.

There are a few additional characters packs, more aliens of different tones, and packs of eyes, lips, teeth, textures for M2, V2, and Apollo.

I put all the basic (skin only no second skin clothes) character textures through the Universal Texture Converter to provide them for all the generation three characters. So there 26 characters for all the gen three characters, including the milbaby.
http://www.sharecg.com/pf/full_uploads.php?pf_user_name=arroatcg&division_id=0&s=dd&pn=5&interstitial_displayed=Yes

Finally, I started doing some free 'music' Gnome Sausage albums of background music for animations. Free unrestricted use.
You will find these interspersed with the expansion packs.

This morning I uploaded the last of the expansion packs and am finished. I am at that point where I just feel like not doing it anymore. I still have some Gnome Sausage to upload and will probably upload one a week until I stop. No more a new upload every day. I am tired. It's over, for now, at least.

M-N-O

M

Map: In 3D graphics, a map is an image used within a material. The purpose of a map is to vary some material attribute across a surface. For example, a texture map alters the color of an object, and a bump map simulates roughness. 2D maps, including all bitmaps, require mapping coordinates, which tell the renderer how to project the map onto the 3D object. 3D procedural textures do not require mapping coordinates, because they are volumetric.
Material: A set of mathematical attributes that determine the ways in which the surface of a model to which they are applied reacts to light. These attributes are sub-divided into individual channels.
Maya: Is 3D computer graphics software that runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, originally developed by Alias Systems Corporation (based on code from a previous Alias product, Alias Sketch!) and currently owned and developed by Autodesk, Inc. It is used to create interactive 3D applications, including video games, animated film, TV series, or visual effects.
Megabyte: A megabyte is 2 to the 20th power, or 1,048,576 bytes.

Megahertz: One megahertz is equal to one million cycles per second. It is used to measure transmission speeds of electronic devices. The most common area you will see Megahertz used is in measuring processor clock speed, such as an 80000 Mhz Pentium XXII. Also what you get when you fall down the stairs and out the window next to the landing and fall onto the broken bottle collection below.
Megapixel: 1 million pixels.A camera's megapixel number is calculated by multiplying the number of vertical pixels by the number of horizontal pixels captured by the camera's sensor, or CCD.
Mesh: The surface geometry of a 3D model, made up of a series of linked geometry elements such as polygons, patches or NURBS surfaces.
A 3D object composed of triangular faces. A mesh object has no true curvature. The appearance of curvature is achieved by increasing the number of faces (level of detail), and by edge smoothing during render time.
Metaball modeling: A technique in which models are created using spheres (or, more rarely, other primitive objects) that attract and cling to each other according to their proximity to one another and their field of influence. Metaball modelling is particularly useful for creating organic objects.
Middleware: Software that enables two separate programs to communicate, regardless of whether they run on different platforms or come from different vendors. Examples include software that connects a Web browser to a database and allows users to request information by filling out Web-based forms; software that lets a program written for a specific database access other databases as well; and enterprise application integration programs that tie together different applications across a corporate network.
MIP mapping: A texture-mapping technique used to produce high-quality computer-generated graphics and 3D animation. In this approach, a high-resolution texture map is scaled into multiple resolutions before it is applied to a surface; this reduces moiré patterns and jagged edges. MIP stands for multim im parvo, Latin for "many things in a small space."
Modeling: Construction of geometric objects in 3D scenes. Models describe the forms of objects, but not their material properties or how they move.
Modifier: Usually, a modelling tool which deforms the structure of an entire object. However, the exact meaning of the term varies from software package to software package.
Modo: A polygon and subdivision surface modeling, sculpting, 3D painting, animation and rendering package developed by Luxology, LLC. The program incorporates features such as n-gons, 3D painting and edge weighting, and runs on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.
Moiré pattern: An interference pattern, which looks like waves or ripples and appears in closely spaced lines or finely detailed patterns, that sometimes occurs in images that have been scanned or are displayed on computer monitors. In CGI this can often occur when viewing a fine or complex tiling texture from far away. Named after Maury Moiré, voted most annoying IT person of 2002. I may have made that last part up...
Morph: To transform from one state to another. Morphing is commonly used in lip-synching, in order to transform the head model of a character between a variety of preset states (or ‘morph targets’), corresponding to common facial expressions, in order to create the illusion of speech.
Morph Targets (a.k.a.-Mesh Targets): The process of causing a mesh to reshape itself into a different form by modeling the different shapes and interpolating between them.
Mouse: A small rodent named after a piece of computer hardware. Often found living off the crumbs in a keyboard.

MTTCAIIARF,NAOO,AF.: Moved to the commons as it is a request for, not an offer of, a freebie. The abbreviation of what is probably the most often used phrase in the General Freepozitory. It is used by the benevolent and wise (and all around pleasant chap) forum moderator Richard Hazeltine to inform individuals as to the reason for the redirection of their request to the commons.-
Also:According to the Haseltine Watcher's Guild, the exact wording varies slightly over time. Have been duly recorded the following variations:
Moved to the Commons as it's a search for, not an offer of, a freebie.
Moved to the Commons as it's a request for, not an offer of, freebies.
Moved to the Commons as it's a request for, not an offer of, a freebie.
(contributed by Houri and rg5a)

Mudbox: Is a high end computer-based 3D sculpting and painting tool. Currently developed by Autodesk.

N

NGon (AKA- NGON or N-gon): A face with MORE than 4 sides. Also a VERY popular name for Vietnamese restaurants.
Node: In computer science, a node is an abstract container of information. Nodes generally have attributes which store data. In a 3D graphics program, nodes are connected together to form a network called a scene graph. For example, in Maya, an object such as a Sphere is made of three nodes, each storing a different type of data: a primitive node, a shape node, and a transform node.
Noob: Probably you if you are reading this.

Normal (Surface Normal): A three-dimensional vector which is perpendicular to a surface. Central to many computer graphics calculations.
Normal Mapping: Normal Mapping is similar to Bump Mapping, but instead of the image being a greyscale heightmap, the colours define in which direction the normal should be shifted, the 3 colour channels being mapped to the 3 directions X, Y and Z. This allows more detail and control over the effect.
Null: Think of them as a transparent box to put things that has its own center-point and point of rotation. so while you can use a Null to consolidate items into groups which can be moved together, one of the most useful features is the fact that the null has a different center-point. So say you want something to rotate around a specific spot, create a null and move it so it's center-point is in the spot you want to rotate your object or figure around, than drop your object or figure into the null and you have a new pivot point for the object.(Quoting WillDupre in response to a question about this subject)
also:
Null: A point within a 3D scene that does not render out, but which is used as a reference for other objects.
NVIATWAS: Naked Vicki in a Temple With a Sword

NURBS: Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines. NURBS curves are two-dimensional curves whose shape is determined by a series of control points or CVs between which they pass. When a series of such curves are joined together, they form a three- dimensional NURBS surface. Such surfaces have a separate co-ordinate space (known as UV co-ordinate space) to that of the 3D scene in which they are situated. NURBS are commonly used to model organic curved-surface objects.
Nybble: Sometimes spelled "nibble," is a set of four bits.

O

Object: A generic term describing any item that can be inserted into and manipulated within a 3D scene. Models, lights, particle emitters and cameras are all objects.
OBJ: Wavefront Object file format or .obj.

OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer): A company that assembles components made by other manufacturers and sells the computers under its own name.
OpenAL: Short for Open Audio Library. Originally developed by Loki Software, then later used by NVIDIA, it was further developed by Creative Technology, and is now developed by Creative Technology with support from Apple, Blue Ripple Sound, and free software/open source volunteer programmers. OpenAL is a programming API and driver specification to allow stereo and surround-sound to be provided without programmers needing to know how the local hardware works in detail. The OpenAL driver can be queried about the capabilities of the sound hardware and the software can then drive it in mono, stereo or full 3d-surround sound by passing commands to the OpenAL driver.-(contributed by Fire Angel)
OpenCL: Short for Open Computation Language. Invented by Apple and placed in the hands of the non-profit Khronos group (which is open for membership to any company). Open CL allows programmers to write software which can use whatever calculation hardware a computer has without having to understand the individual hardware. For example OpenCL rendering software can be written to use OpenCL enquiries to find out how many processors are available, and it can then use them all for rendering by passing commands to the OpenCL driver for that computer. A good OpenCL driver can even extend itself if new hardware is fitted, so on modern graphics cards some of the many graphics cores can be used to do calculations instead, if the card manufacturer has provided a suitable OpenCL driver. -(contributed by Fire Angel)
OpenGL: 1-An option used to enable hardware acceleration for fast document window updates.
2- Short for Open Graphics Library. OpenGL was invented so that programmers writing graphics applications did not have to write code for each graphics card manufacturer, which they did before OpenGL came in. It also means that it is easier to port graphics applications from one operating system to another, because the graphics driver code doesn't need to change. The capabilities of the graphics card can be found in software by passing a query to the OpenGL driver, and the screen can then be driven using commands passed to the OpenGL driver. Invented by Silicon Graphics originally it is now managed by the non-profit Khronos group (which is open for membership to any company). -(contributed by Fire Angel)
Open Source: With open-source software, the original programming "blueprints," or source code, of a program are available to the public for free so that anyone can see and modify it. The most notable example of open-source software is the Linux operating system. The philosophy behind the open-source movement is that letting as many programmers as possible contribute their creativity will ultimately produce the highest quality software.

Orthographic Projection: A flat, 2D view of a 3D object or scene. Technical drawings, blueprints and floor plans are examples of orthographic projections. In 3D programs, orthographic views such as Front, Top, and Side are common. Orthographic views are always aligned with the axes of the world Cartesian coordinate system. They are necessary because 3D perspective views always introduce visual distortions of object size, placement and/or distance.
An ortho view is unlike a perspective view, because an ortho view shows no indication of distance or depth. In a perspective view, an object is displayed smaller as it moves away from the viewer. Parallel lines appear to converge at a vanishing point. Simulated rays of light from the 3D scene, called lines of projection, all converge at the virtual camera lens.
In an ortho view, the size of an object in the view does not depend on its distance. Two objects of the same size are drawn the same size on the screen, no matter how far away they are. Parallel lines remain parallel, and do not converge. The lines of projection are at right angles to the screen.

INTRO:

Hello and welcome to the world of 3D graphics and modeling. I say that because if you are reading this you probably are new to this stuff and don't know any better than to be looking here and not somewhere that you could actually get a proper answer. I'm lordvicore and I'm compiling these terms and their definitions into a sort of "glossary", to give a quick answer to terms that often pop up on forums, conversations (yeah, right) and in CG magazines found in peoples bathrooms. I've also thrown in a few "internet abbreviations"and terms for any folks who may have just discovered "3D" or that the "web" is not just a thing spiders make on the back of your computer. You should also know that my English is bad (I speak "New York") and that I was raised by wolves who also taught me how to spell and use grammar (and potty trained me too, but that's another story altogether...). So if you don't find the answer you are looking for, don't like the way I write or find this annoying and pointless may I suggest you get the answer from someone who actually went to school and does not pee on the carpet.

You can also see the original post in the Old DAZ 3D Forum.

A-B-C

A

Aliasing:An artifact or distortion, often referred to as 'jaggies', that occurs in a digital image when not enough samples are taken to accurately represent straight lines and smooth transition between highly contrasted edges. In a 3D rendered image, the most common example is the stair-stepping effect seen along the edges of objects.
Alpha Channel: Alpha Channel is information about pixels stored in images.
This concept enables the storing of transparency information in images.

Amapi: Amapi is an application used for the conception and creation of high-end 3D models, often used for product design and architecture.In June 2006, Amapi, Eovia's last remaining product, was acquired by e frontier. However, the future of Amapi's development is unclear, as it relies on the rendering engine from Carrara 3, now a DAZ 3D product.
Ambient color: A global pervasive light color that is applied to a scene.

Ambient Light: Ambient Light is light that doesn't seem to come from a specific source, but is
just there. Look under the desk - it's pretty dark, but there's some light there. In the real world, this is caused by stray photons bouncing around and occasionally ricocheting under the desk. Ambient light is basic,minimal amount of light in the whole scene. Adding too much ambient light makes a scene look washed out. Since the light doesn't come from anywhere, all sides of an object are illuminated equally, and it won't have any shading on it.
Ambient Occlusion: 1- a shading method which attempts to approximate the way light radiates in the real world, particularly off what are normally thought of as non-reflective or matte surfaces.
2- (contributed by Valendar)-Ambient Occlusion is a simulation of how light tends to not reflect as much when two objects are close to each other, as their proximity causes it to bounce back and forth between the two objects, rather than off in the direction of the viewer. The practical end result is a mild self-shadowing in cracks and grooves. To see it in action, hold your palms facing each other about a handwidth apart, and look at them. Then bring them together, and look at the point where they meet - there will be a black line at the point of meeting, VERY rapidly fading to normal skin tone.
The primary use in rendering is to promote realistic light distribution. It can also be baked as a map, and overlaid on a texture (usually the specular or reflectivity maps) to further emphasize this effect, as well as to more accurately simulate metals and other reflective surfaces.
Anti-aliasing (AA): The process of averaging between pixels of different colors to remove aliasing artifacts. This result is a smoother, more blended transition between the edge of two areas rather than a distinctly jagged appearance. Some examples are oversampling/supersampling and filtering.
AFAIK: "As Far As I Know".

AO: Ambient Occlusion... See previous definition to find out what that is. Often confused with APO which is ArmPit Odor- a condition one develops when the ratio of bathing to computer use is not balanced.
Apps: Apps is short for for application. An app is software, that can run on your computer,the Internet, on a good phone or other electronic devices like Giant Killer Robots.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange): The international standard that assigns unique seven-bit binary numbers to each of 128 standard characters, including letters, numbers, punctuation, and control codes (such as the character that marks the end of a line of text). Developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), ASCII (pronounced "askee") is one of the fundamental standards of computing. The ASCII Table shows the base 10 number for each character: An uppercase A, for example, is the number 65 and a lowercase z is the number 122. Several eight-bit codes based on ASCII have been developed to support languages other than English, adding a set of 128 "upper ASCII" characters (for a total of 256). A superset of ASCII called unicode adds a second byte for each character, raising the number of possible combinations to 65,536, enough to support the unique characters contained in hundreds of langauges around the world.
A.S.S.: Anonymous Stalker Syndrome(contributed by Rezca)

Autofold: The process of skewing, distorting, or folding geometry by selecting a specific point on an edge or face and moving the points
Avatar: An image or Icon one uses to misrepresent themselves online. Used in place of an actual photo of the person so as to avoid embarrassment and or terrifying small children.
Axis: Y and X axes, or Y, X, and Z axes, perpendicular lines used in the Cartesian coordinate system. Named after French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, inventor of the "Cartesian Croissant".
Axis of Motion: In 3D space, the line that an object follows during movement.

Axis of Rotation: In 3D space, the line that an object rotates around.

Axonometric: Meaning 'measurable from the axes.' An axonometric projection is a view of a model in which lines appear parallel in both 3 dimensional and 2 dimensional space, and lines have a length that is to some scale.

B

Bad CGI Mojo: When nothing the tutorial says should work does work,following the manual or book proves useless and every fanboy of said program swears it it is you or your stupid computer and not the holy software.
Back light: A light positioned behind the scene to cast light on the edges of the scene objects.
Background image: An image file that is set to appear as though it is in back of the scene.
Baking: 1-Baking Textures:This involves taking a model, applying (usually) procedural maps or vertex based lighting, then rendering that to a diffuse (or other type of) map. As an example, one could use one's (baking capable) program of choice to render a pure white version of the object with Ambient Occlusion directly to a map, which is then brought in to your image editor of choice and multiplied, overlaid, or what have you on top of various other maps. It can add a lot of realism when multiplied over a specular or reflectivity map, among other things.
2-Baking Normals / Displacement:A bit more involved, this usually involves having two versions of a model - the low or mid polygon count version that is mapped and prepped, and a super-high polygon version with all of the detail in the actual model itself. Both are in the exact same pose and position, so that they overlap each other slightly. The program then (usually) creates a "cage" based on the lower poly figure, and uses this to determine ray casting direction. It then renders to a Normal Map or Displacement map, using the rays of the low poly where it hits the high poly and calculating both the angle of impact, and the height difference. The angle of impact is more important to a Normal Map, while the height difference is more important to a Displacement or Bump map.
3-Baking Morphs: Making the morphs work in export formats for other programs.(contributed by Valendar).
Beta: A term used to label software that is not quite ready for commercial release. Often this software has bugs, is missing functionality or makes you ask questions like "When are they going to fix this" or "What the hell were they thinking".
Bevel mapping: A beveled edge refers to an edge of a structure that is not perpendicular (but instead often at 45 degrees) to the faces of the piece. The words bevel and chamfer overlap in usage; in general usage they are often interchanged, while in technical usage they may sometimes be differentiated.
Bézier: Bézier surfaces were first described in 1972 by the French engineer Pierre Bézier who used them to design automobile bodies. Bézier surfaces can be of any degree, but bicubic Bézier surfaces generally provide enough degrees of freedom for most applications.
Bi-cubic spline (B-spline): A mathematical interpolation method of describing complex curves and surfaces.
Bilinear texture filtering: Bilinear texture filtering enhances a computer's ability to scale 3D graphics in a smoother, more realistic way. With 3D graphics, especially with games, you don't want a graphics card to grab texture maps from memory and simply write them on your computer screen: as the polygons drawn onscreen grew bigger, they would take on a blocky look. To improve the ability to scale 3D graphics, you need to filter them. Bilinear texture filtering does this by averaging the four adjacent texels (the basic elements of a texture map), thus creating a new texel that renders a more subtle, realistic texture.
Bitmap: A method of depicting a graphic image on a computer screen, a printer, or a scanner. As its name suggests, a bitmap is a map of dots--similar to what you see when you look at a photo of a nude person under a strong magnifying glass. Bitmaps come in many file formats (GIF, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PICT, and PCX, to name a few) and can be read by paint programs and image editors such as Adobe Photoshop. If you scale up a bitmap, it will look blocky.
Blender: A sophisticated "freeware" modeling and animation program, know to cause the heads of "Noobs" to explode. Can be found here:
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Also a device used to mix Frozen Margaritas, a useful way of relieving the pain when first learning "Blender".
BMP: Bit Map format(I don't know where that "P" comes from). A lossless compression format native to Microsoft Paint.
Bone: A rigid object analogous to a real bone, placed inside the ‘skeleton’ of a character during the process of rigging it for animation. When a bone is moved, it acts upon the mesh of the character model, deforming it.Also something a dog likes to chew on.
Boolean Modeling: A type of solid modeling that involves adding or subtracting from a "primitive" form such as a sphere. Think of it as sculpting with clay. Bryce uses Booleans to create complex shapes.
Named after George Boole, inventor of Boolean logic, which is the basis of modern digital computer logic. Really.
Bounding Box: Computer programs deal with onscreen objects, such as images, by placing them in an invisible rectangle called a bounding box. You can see an example of a bounding box by clicking an image inside a word processor such as Microsoft Word. The outline that appears around the image is the bounding box.
BO: Body Odor: a condition often arising from too much Internet or Computer use and not enough showering. A can of "Commercial Air Freshener" or "Industrial Body Spray" can be used to mask its effects on the environment.
Browser: A browser provides a graphical interface to the World Wide Web; it interprets hypertext links, displays images, and lets you view sites(and materials of questionable moral content) as well as navigate from one Web site to another.
Bryce: is a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program specializing in fractal landscapes. The name is taken from Bryce Canyon — a rugged region with many of the same landscapes that were first simulated with the software.The first commercial version by MetaCreations, Bryce 1.0, appeared in 1994 for the Macintosh. It was later sold to Corel and up to version 5.01 it languished until its 2004 purchase by DAZ 3D (YAY!).
It can be found here:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/bryce7?_m=d
But... things change over time and for all I know, by the time you read this DAZ 3D may be run by giant mutant hamsters hellbent on renaming the company and all the software (GMH3D).
BTW: By the way. Also Big Tough Wombat.

Buffer underrun: An error that occurs when a memory buffer feeding a device runs out of data. For example, the data stream from your hard drive to your CD-recordable drive is interrupted by requests from another program, starving your CD drive's buffer and forcing the write laser to shut down. Until technologies came along like BURN-Proof, the buffer underrun would ruin your CD media. Buffer underruns can be caused by program or operating system glitches,gremlins, evil gnomes, a too-slow computer, or a CD-recordable drive with an insufficient buffer.
Bug: In the computer world, a bug is an error in a software program. It is believed that the term dates back to the 1940's when the Giant radioactive moth "Mothara" destroyed ENIAC the worlds first functional computer.
Bump: Or "Bumping" the act of making a simple post in a thread to "Bump" the thread back up to the front of the forum queue. Usually just the word "Bump" is posted.A side note about bumping: Quoting Richard Haseltine-(in reference to bumping)"Which is frowned on, since we don't want competitive bumping trying to keep people's favourite threads at the top of the list."
Thus try not to abuse this new knowledge and use the power of the "Bump" sparingly. After all "With great power comes great... something?"...My DVD of "Spiderman" always skips on that part, so I assume something great happens when you are powerful. So be careful how you use Bump or you could end up like Peter Parker's Uncle.
Bump mapping: Bump mapping is a technique where at each pixel, a perturbation to the surface normal of the object being rendered is looked up in a texture map and applied before the illumination calculation is done. Bump Mapping use a gray-scale image map to change the direction of surface normals. You can use this to simulate height, so that you can paint wrinkles and bumps.50 % grey means neutral (no change is made),lighter means higher, darker means lower. Note that the position of faces is not actually changed; by rotating just the normals, lighting will change too, to give the illusion of a height difference. This has downsides too: the outline of objects isn't changed, so the trick is given away. Okay, I copied and pasted that one... I'm not even sure what "perturbation" means... I'd of guessed something that too much of will give you hairy palms.

C

CAD: Computer Aided Design. Come on, did you really not know that? Could also refer to a man who seduces a young woman, often to her social or financial ruin or the former Central Ammunition Dump at Hawthorn, Wiltshire UK... it might still be for sale. Really, look it up.
Camera: A piece of software's interpretation of the user's point of view.

Caffeine: A bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that is a psychoactive stimulant. Caffeine was isolated from coffee in 1820 by a German chemist, Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge Von Frankenstein to help make a monster he had created, dance better. Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants.
Caffeine which is also found in Tea, Cola, Coffee and Mountain Dew is often consumed in large quantities by those addicted to or employed in the area of CGI art. It is generally used to gradually replace the highly inadequate naturally occurring human blood which is of no use to CGI artists. This strategy creates a state where sleep is no longer necessary and dreams and reality blur into one swirling kaleidoscope of thought and universal singularity, as well as having the added benefit of helping paralyze and kill certain large carnivorous insects which feed on CGI artists while they wait for their renders to complete.
*Disclaimer: Do not replace your blood with caffeine based beverages, it is very painful and messy and most of the insects that are feeding on you while you work, will only feed faster due to their own built up immunity and addiction to caffeine.
Camera Dots: An interface control in Poser, used to remember and recall camera properties and positions.
Cartesian Coordinates: A three dimensional system whereby the position of a point can be defined with reference to a set of axes at right angles to each other.
Carrara: Is a general purpose modeling, 3D figure posing, landscape design, rigid and soft-body dynamics, animation and rendering application. Carrara is compatible with Poser and DAZ format 3D figures and includes a selection of landscape generation tools, together with its more traditional modeling features. Carrara began in 1996 when MetaCreations merged two of it's newly acquired 3D graphics programs Ray Dream Studio and Infini-D into one single application. In 2000 MetaCreations sold Carrara to Eovia. Evovia developed Carrara until version 5 when in 2006 it was acquired by DAZ 3D. Today it can be found here:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/carrara8?

Caustics:
1- The light patterns generated on a surface by refracted or reflected light rays. Photon mapping is one example of this.
2-Caustics in optics is a bundle of light rays. For example a caustic effect may be seen when light refracts or reflects through some refractive or reflective material, to create a more focused, stronger light on the final location. Such amplification, especially of sunlight, can burn — hence the name. A common situation when caustics are visible is when some light points on glass. There is a shadow behind the glass, but also there is a stronger light spot. Nowadays, almost every advanced rendering system supports caustics. Some of them even support volumetric caustics. This is accomplished by raytracing the possible paths of the light beam through the glass, accounting for the refraction, reflection, etc.
CD: Compact Disc.... where the hell have you been?

Child: An object assigned to a "Parent" object. A child object is controlled by the parent object it is linked to. Also a small human.
CINEMA 4D: Is a modeling, animation and rendering package developed by MAXON Computer GmbH. It is capable of procedural and polygonal/subd modeling, animating, lighting, texturing and rendering.
CKP: Cute Kitty Pictures.

Clipping plane: A plane positioned parallel to the camera that defines the border beyond which scene objects are not visible.
Cloud of points: A set of x-y-z coordinates obtain from a 3D scanner or digitizer. The data can then be turned into a continuous surface and used in a 3D model. Often used in reverse engineering applications.
COLLADA (COLLAborative Design Activity): A data exchange format for 3D applications (specification by Sony/Khronos). COLLADA files .DAE are based on XML.
Collision Detection: In video games and computer simulations, collision detection involves using algorithms to check for collision, or intersection, of two "solid" objects.
Compositing: The combination of two or more images to create a new image. A simple example would be a foreground character superimposed over an environmental background.
Conforming clothes: Clothes or props that are designed to fit a particular character exactly and to remain fitting as the character's pose changes.
Conforming prop: A model object that is deformed to fit a given character.

Constrained group: (in dynamic clothing) A group of cloth vertices that are constrained so as to not be moved by the dynamic simulation.
Constructive Solids Geometry (CSG): A solid modeling method using primitives to build more complex models and Boolean operations of add, difference, and intersection.
Content Collection: A group of content gathered together that can include content from several different categories.
CCT: Short for Content Creator Toolkit, a feature new to DAZ Studio 4 Pro and also available separately as a Plugin for DAZ Studio Advanced, it includes the following features:
• Weight-Map Brush - Paint TriAx and traditional weight-maps for your figures.
• Transfer Utility- Transfer rigging, grouping, and shapes from one object in your scene to another.
• Polygon Group Editor Tool - Create/Edit polygon groups on any model.
• Figure Setup Tab - (previously Skeleton Setup) Define the bone hierarchy for a figure, associated geometries, and the relationships between them.
• Joint Editor Tool - Manipulate the Joint Parameters of a figure, along with the ability to create and/or remove bones.
• CR2 Exporter - Export figures to the Poser Character (.cr2) format.
• Property Editor Tab - Mass editing of property attributes, as well as creation, deletion, grouping, ordering and linking.
• ERC Freeze - Adjust property values (via Parameters tab or Presets/Poses) and link those properties to a controller; automatically calculating the scalar required to drive the properties to their current value when the controller is set to its current value (or 1 in the case of a 0 value).
• Morph Loader Pro - Quickly and easily add your own custom and third-party morphs to objects in your scene, using Wavefront Object (*.obj) files, with many more options and much greater control than the Advanced version.
• ExP Exporter - Generate ExP product files through a visual interface. This tool greatly simplifies a very tedious and time-consuming process that had to be done by hand prior to this tool.
A great help to individuals serious about content creation for DAZ studio and not to be confused with Cybernetic Chipmunk Terrorist which is something altogether different.
Convex hull: The “skin” created by enclosing all the extreme points of a 3D object.
Cookie: A small data file written to your hard drive by most Web sites. Cookies typically contain such items as passwords, lists of pages you've visited, or the dates when you last looked at certain pages. Web sites usually read the cookies they leave every time you visit in order to track user behavior in aggregate. When you register at a site, cookies can make logging in later unnecessary, but they also enable a site to log every session under your name. Also a small disc shaped baked good often consumed with milk.
Coplanar: A reference to entities that exist in the same plane.

Chord length: The distance between the starting point and the ending point of an Arc entity.
CSG: Constructive Solid Geometry- Term used in some apps for boolean geometry. Constructing solid objects from simple 'primitives'.-(contributed by AestheticDemon)
Cute Kitty Pictures: Used to defray tension in volatile forum debates and to hijack a thread bringing it off topic faster than the speed of light. (by: DestinysGarden)
CV: Control Vertex. a control handle or point used to manipulate the shape of a NURBS curve.