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Glossary

Designer-specific terms. For framework concepts (signals, effects, Tweens) see the Framework glossary.

A

Action id: Machine-readable identifier for a menu / toolbox / shortcut. Looks like mesh.transfer_polar_normal. Used by Aether and by scripting.

Aether: The in-app AI agent. Chat panel; 123 tools across 15 modules.

Animation Clip: A reusable animation track. See Trax and Time Editor.

AOV: Arbitrary Output Variable: a render pass isolating one component (diffuse / specular / depth / normal / etc.).

B

Bake: Commit a derived result into a baked texture or per-frame keys. The texture transfer pipelines bake albedos + normals; sims bake to keys.

BBox-warp: A texture transfer pipeline that maps the source photo's bounding box onto the target mesh's UV bounding box.

Brush Library: Searchable panel of brush presets.

Brush Studio: Full editor for authoring a brush from scratch.

C

Channel Box: Right-column numeric editor for the selection.

Code Link: Two-way wiring between the Designer and your editor.

D

Dope Sheet: Per-key timing editor.

E

.esk: The skin bundle format. See .esk bundle format.

Eyedrop: Tool that samples a color (or tileable swatch) from the canvas.

H

HUD: Heads-up display overlay on the View Panel.

Hypershade: Node-graph material editor.

L

Landmark: One half of a paired source ↔ target point used by the texture transfer pipelines. Six pairs is the sweet spot for butterflies.

Loft: Build a surface from a sequence of input curves.

M

MASH: Procedural duplication system; scatter copies of a source in a grid / random / curve / mesh distribution.

Menu set: Maya-style mode switching the menu bar's contents (Modeling, Rigging, Animation, FX, Rendering).

Mesh3D: A 3D model placement.

N

NURBS: Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline curve.

O

Orient Joint: Align a joint's local axes (X toward child, Y up, Z cross).

P

Path: A 2D vector shape placement.

Pivot Edit: Tool that moves a placement's pivot point without moving its content.

Placement: One item in a skin's document.json. Has an id and a kind.

Polar pipeline: A texture transfer pipeline using polar coordinates centered on the model body. Fast, smooth.

Preview Skin: Run > Preview Skin opens a borderless transparent window loading the live .esk as the framework would load it.

Project Explorer: Right-column tree view of the project (Objects, Assets, History, Sets).

R

Render Layer: A named collection of placements rendered as one pass.

Render Part Mask: A per-placement region that narrows operations (paint, bake, deform) to a subset of vertices.

S

Shelf: Customizable toolbar below the menu bar.

Snapshot: A named scene state restore point. Aether references snapshots for rollback.

spp: Samples per pixel. Render quality measure.

T

Toolbox: Left-edge column of 17 tools.

Trax Editor: Clip-level animation editor.

V

View Panel: The big center region. Where you actually edit.

See also