A great deal of information goes into displaying a 3-D scene. A "scene" consists of objects made up of smaller elements such as blocks, cylinders, spheres or cones. The more elements you have contained within an object, the more complicated the structure will be. "Objects" and "elements" in 3-D consist of properties such as shape, color, texture, shading and location. For instance, a scene may contain numerous objects such as a dog, a tree and a fence. Zoom in on the fence and you see blocks and rectangles of various sizes, colors, and levels of shading that when you zoom out again makes the fence look dimensional.
Textures are what bring your animation to life. Texture is the color, patterns and bitmap images applied to the surface of an object to make the object more realistic. You can make a table look rough or coarse, or maybe shiny and smooth. You can create light that manipulates shade or shadows on your objects. The term "ambient occlusion" refers to how you apply shadowing to give the effect of realism.
Objects are created by "modeling." Modeling is the process of creating objects using a 3-D application. To model an object such as a fence, you first start with a shape. You create the shape from scratch, or you can import it from a library or collection of geometric shapes called "primitives." Primitives are typically a collection of blocks, cylinders, spheres and cones that you can manipulate to fit your needs.
Rendering is the process of applying special effects to 3-D objects to create a final view. Terms related to rendering include "light transport" where you simulate the path of light in and around an image in order to obtain photo realistic views. Rendering is achieved in animation and graphics software by applying a process called "3-D projection" to scenes you have previously designed. 3-D projection occurs by mapping three-dimensional points to give an object or groups of objects greater definition.