Textures
What texture type stores information about surface normals to fake lighting details?
Normal Map
What is the name of the programming language used for creating shaders in Unity
HLSL
What is the name of the software commonly used to create and edit 3D models
Maya, Blender, or 3ds Max
Which technique reduces model complexity as objects move farther from the camera, boosting performance?
LOD
What does the command ECHO do in a batch file
Print something to console
Name the texture map used to control the reflectivity of a surface.
Roughness or Metalness
Which shader type is responsible for computing the color of a pixel on the screen?
Fragment shader (or Pixel shader)
Which tool is known for procedural texture generation, often used to create PBR materials
Substance Designer
What common optimization technique for reducing memory usage and improving texture performance combines textures together into one texture.
Texture Atlas
Name a common scripting language for automating tasks in Maya
MEL (Maya Embedded Language) or Python
This compression format, used in DirectX for high-quality RGB and RGBA textures, divides images into 4x4 texel blocks of 16 bytes each and supports up to 8 modes for various color and alpha configurations.
BC7
Which shader type processes vertex positions and passes data to the next stage in the rendering pipeline?
Vertex shader
Name a popular version control software used in game development.
Perforce, Git, or SVN
What is the term for the process of hiding objects that aren’t visible to the camera to improve rendering performance?
Occlusion culling
What is the term for languages that are translated to machine code before execution, in contrast to interpreted languages
Compiled languages
Which file format is commonly used for compressing textures without losing quality
TIFF, PNG
What shader effect dynamically subdivides polygons, adding detail, but can impact performance?
Tesselation Shader
What machine learning tool allows you to create images using an extendable collection of nodes and use a variety of Generative AI models and control nets
ComfyUI / Imaginarium
What is the term for rendering multiple identical objects efficiently by sharing data, with limited customization?
Instancing
Denoted as '%', this operator returns the remainder of a division operation.
Modulus
What feature in textures involves pre-calculated, optimized sequences that improve performance by reducing resolution at a distance
MIP Maps
The ddx or ddy shader calculates this
derivative of x and derivative of y of passed in value
What procedural tool is widely used in VFX and game development for creating complex simulations, visual effects, and generative art through node-based workflows
Houdini
What tools are commonly used to profile frames in a game
PIX, Renderdoc, etc
What is the name of the operator in Python that allows conditional expressions in a single line, using the syntax x if condition else y
Ternary