ACES – Academy Color Encoding Specification is the industry-standard system of color managing and image exchange. It helps to standardize color space between different input sources making the workflow easier and quicker.
Adobe After Effects – Adobe After Effects is an application for video editing, motion graphics design, VFX creation, and compositing from Adobe. It is also often used for keying, tracking, and animation. After Effects is a tool often used at the post-production stage.
Adobe Photoshop – Photoshop is an application for creating and editing 2D images from Adobe. Photoshop is used to create storyboards, concept art, logos and posters, illustrations, edit images, and more. VFX artists mostly use it to create matte paintings and hand-painted textures.
Alpha Channel – An alpha channel is a four-channel image (RGBA) an alpha channel is the one that stores transparency information. It is represented by a number between 0 and 1 where 0 is completely transparent and 1 is fully opaque.
Antialiasing – Antialiasing is a term used to refer to various techniques that help you smooth out the jagged edges of an image. It helps you get rid of blocky pixels and even out your outlines.
Aperture – in a camera lens, an aperture is the opening that the light travels through to enter the camera and capture an image. Understanding camera aperture is crucial for creating lens effects in VFX.
Arnold – Arnold is an advanced renderer from Autodesk that uses unbiased, physically-based Monte Carlo path tracing techniques. It’s known for being one of the best solutions for photorealistic rendering used in big movie production (e.g. Alice in Wonderland, X-Men, Star Wars).
Artifact – An artifact undesired element in an image or a video that needs to be removed from it as it has a negative effect on the quality of visual content. Artifacts often appear while shooting live-action footage as a side effect of weather conditions (e.g. damage to the camera lens may result in noises, blurs, bokeh spots, etc.)
ArtStation – Artstation is one of the largest and most well-known online platforms for digital artists where you can share your artworks, connect with other creators, find tutorials, participate in contests and challenges, and more.
Blender – Blender is a free and open-source software application from Blender Foundation that allows you to perform a great variety of creative tasks in one place. In Blender, you can perform 3D modeling, texturing, rigging, particle simulation, animating, match moving, rendering, and more.