Z-buffer
n.— «Catmull invented texture mapping (the way to make digital surfaces “pour” over objects), the Z-buffer (an algorithm that tracks the virtual distance between pixels and a viewer, now standard in most personal computers and games), and the Catmull-Rom spline (another algorithm that creates curves along multiple points, producing irregular motion that mimics the way living things really move).» —“Welcome to Planet Pixar” by Austin Bunn Wired June, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...