Glossary

Every word DNA uses, in one plain sentence each — with a link to the guide that goes deeper.

New to a term you saw on screen? Find it here, then follow the link to learn it properly.

A

Analytic shape — A shape described by maths rather than pixels or triangles, so it stays razor-sharp at any zoom and supports booleans for free. → Analytic shapes

Analytical (toggle) — The switch on shape-making nodes that chooses whether a shape stays analytic (crisp, equation-defined) or becomes a regular mesh. → Analytic shapes

Attribute — A piece of per-row data carried alongside each thing in a collection, like position, colour, size, or identity. → Attributes

Auto-conversion — DNA quietly changes one kind of value into another when you wire mismatched things together, so you rarely think about types. → Automatic conversion

B

Bake — Freeze a live, calculated thing (a field, a shape) into fixed data so it's fast and stops recalculating. → Distance fields & volumes

Billboard — A flat sprite that always turns to face the camera, so it looks the same from every angle. → Sprites, impostors & billboards

Blend mode — How a layer mixes into the layers beneath it — Normal, Add, Multiply, Screen and dozens more. → Layers & compositing

Boolean — A true/false state you can read every frame (a held switch) — as opposed to a trigger, which fires once. → Triggers, events & booleans

Bundle — A single portable file that holds a finished piece so it can be played back outside the editor. → The player

Bypass — A per-node switch (B) that turns a node off so it passes its input straight through, untouched. → Node controls

C

Canvas — Your 2D working area and its frame — the flat space a shape lives in before (and while) it appears in a scene. → Working in 2D and 3D

Clock — One of DNA's three time sources — visual, audio, and musical — that things can run against. → Clocks & tempo

Collection — A spreadsheet of things: rows (points, shapes, meshes) with columns of attributes. → Collections

Colour management — How DNA keeps colour consistent from working space to your display, including tone mapping and HDR. → Colour management

Compositing — Stacking and mixing layers — with opacity, blend modes and mattes — into the final image. → Layers & compositing

Connection — A wire you draw between two nodes to pass a value from one to the next. → Creating & wiring nodes

Context — How a single value resolves differently for each element, duplicate, or loop pass — the idea newcomers trip on. → Context: per-element values

Cook — When a node recomputes its result; the cook badge on a node shows when it does so. → The graph & cooking

Cook policy — The per-node setting (Auto / Always-Cook / Frozen / Selective) that controls when a node recomputes. → Cook policy

Curve — An animation curve in the curve editor: how a value eases between keyframes over time. → The curve editor

D

Distance field — A value at every point in space telling you how far the nearest surface is — great for masks, displacement, and meshing. → Distance fields & volumes

E

Easing — The shape of a transition — slow-in, slow-out — that makes motion feel natural instead of robotic. → The curve editor

Edge — The single moment a value flips — rising (turns true) or falling (turns false). Detecting an edge turns a state into an event. → Triggers, events & booleans

Event — Something that happens at one moment (an entry, a beat, a press), as opposed to a held state. In DNA an event is a trigger — a boolean caught on its edge. → Triggers, events & booleans

Expression — A small line of code run on every element at GPU speed, for when you want to compute attributes directly. → The Expression language

F

Feedback loop — A loop that feeds a node's output back into itself frame after frame, for trails, growth, and accumulation. → Loops & feedback

Family — The category a node belongs to (Generate, Modify, Data, IO, Structure, Plugin); it colours the node's header and groups the palette. → Node families & graph colours

Field — A formula, not stored data — a value that exists at every point in space (scalar, vector, colour, distance, morph). → Fields

For-each loop — A subgraph that runs once per element (or per frame), so you can process each thing individually. → Loops & feedback

G

Gaussian splat — A cloud of soft, coloured blobs that scatters and simulates like points but renders like a soft volume; a first-class collection kind. → Gaussian splats

Gizmo — The on-screen handle you grab in the viewport to move, rotate, or scale something. → Viewport tools

Gradient — A ramp of colour stops you author by hand, which becomes a colour field when wired into space. → Scene values

Graph — The whole network of nodes and wires that makes up your project. → The graph & cooking

H

HDR — High dynamic range: keeping bright values brighter than white so highlights and exposure behave correctly. → Colour management

Hotbar — The 1–9 slots for parameters you've pinned, so your key controls are always one keypress away. → The Parameters panel & hotbar

I

Identity (@id) — The stable per-row tag that lets DNA track the same element across frames, even as things are added or removed. → Attributes

Impostor — A raster that's continuously captured from 3D content and shown in its place in the scene, so it keeps a 3D look for the cost of a flat image. It stays a raster. → Sprites, impostors & billboards

Instancing — Making many lightweight copies of one template, laid out in space (grid, ring, path, onto points), each with its own placement — without duplicating the geometry. → Copying & instancing

Iterator — The node that stamps out copies of a template across a layout or count — DNA's workhorse for instancing. → Copying & instancing

K

Keyframe — A value you've pinned at a point in time (K); DNA animates smoothly between keyframes. → Keyframing

L

Layer — A node promoted into the stack that composites into the final image, with its own opacity and blend mode. → Layers & compositing

Live input — A real-time signal from outside DNA (MIDI, OSC, a camera, audio) that makes the graph cook every frame. → Live performance

M

Material — How a surface looks when lit — its colour, roughness, metalness, and more. → Materials

Matte — Using one layer's shape or brightness to mask another (a track matte). → Layers & compositing

Mesh — Geometry made of triangles and vertices — the classic 3D surface form. → Collections

Morph field — A field that describes how to push points around to blend between shapes. → Fields

N

Node — A single building block that does one job; you wire nodes together to make things. → The graph & cooking

Noise — Procedural, organic randomness used to add texture, jitter, and natural variation. → Fields

Normal (@N) — The direction a surface faces at each point, used for lighting and orientation. → Attributes

O

Opacity — A per-node setting for how transparent its result is when it composites. → Node controls

P

Parameter — A control on a node — a slider, colour, dropdown, or text box — that shapes what it does. → Parameter widgets

Parameter expression — Type = in any parameter to drive it from a small formula or another node's value. → Parameter expressions

PBR — Physically based rendering: materials that respond to light realistically. → Materials

Pixel preview — A viewport mode that shows your canvas at its true output resolution, letterboxed; the sharp mode fills the panel instead. → The viewport

Player — The companion app that plays a finished bundle outside the editor (desktop, web, or headless). → The player

Plugin — An add-on that extends DNA with new nodes, shaders, or audio effects. → Plugins

Point — The simplest row in a collection: a position with attributes, used for scattering and simulation. → Collections

Position (@P) — Where each element sits in space — the most fundamental attribute. → Attributes

Promote — Turn a node into a compositing layer so it joins the stack with opacity, blend mode, and scope. → Layers & scenes on nodes

R

Raster — An image: colour stored on a fixed grid of pixels (so it blurs when scaled up). → Rasters (images)

Rasterise — Bake a shape, geometry, or field down into an image for feedback loops and image filters. → Rasterizing

Renderer — The backend that turns your scene into pixels; you can swap it per viewport. → Choosing a renderer

S

Sample — Read a field's value at a specific point (or at every point in a collection). → Fields & sampling

Scalar field — A field that returns a single number everywhere in space — brightness, density, distance. → Fields

Scatter — Spread points across a surface, shape, or volume to instance things onto. → sop.scatter

Scene — The 3D world — its cameras, lights, materials, and geometry. → Scene values

Scope — How wide an influencer reaches: the whole project, one scene, or a chosen set of elements. → Layers & scenes on nodes

Signal — A value sampled over time, with a sample rate — used for audio and automation, not per-point geometry. → Numbers, signals & audio

Solo — A per-node switch (S) that shows only that node's result in the viewport. → Node controls

Solver — The engine that advances a simulation each frame — particles, cloth, hair, soft and rigid bodies, fluid. → Simulation

Splat — Short for Gaussian splat: a cloud of soft coloured blobs from photos or scans; a first-class collection kind. → Gaussian splats

Sprite — A point that carries a raster as its texture, drawn as a small quad — as a camera-facing billboard or a fixed-orientation card. The thing on the wire is points, not an image. → Sprites, impostors & billboards

Subgraph — A group of nodes collapsed into one, to keep things tidy and reusable. → Subgraphs

T

Tempo bus — The shared musical tempo DNA locks to — Manual, Tap, Ableton Link, MIDI clock, or MTC. → Clocks & tempo

Tone mapping — How bright HDR values are gently compressed to fit your display (ACES, AgX, Reinhard…). → Colour management

Transform — Position, rotation, and scale together — what the gizmo edits and what places things in space. → Viewport tools

Transport — The play / pause / scrub / loop controls that drive time. → The timeline

Trigger — An event — a single moment when something fires (an edge, a trigger-button press, a region entry) — as opposed to a held boolean state. → Triggers, events & booleans

Trim — Narrow something to a portion of its full extent — a curve, a path, or the playback range. → The timeline

U

UV (@uv) — Per-point texture coordinates that say where each spot lands on an image. → Attributes

V

Value — Whatever travels along a wire; values come in families (collections, fields, numbers, scene things). → What flows on the wires

Vector field — A field that returns a direction (and strength) everywhere in space — for flow, forces, and warping. → Fields

Volume — A field baked into a 3D grid of cells, used for fog, clouds, and smoke. → Distance fields & volumes

Voxel — One cell of a volume — the 3D equivalent of a pixel. → Distance fields & volumes

W

Warp — Push and bend geometry or an image with a field or a grid you drag. → Viewport tools

Wire — The line connecting two nodes; it carries a value from output to input. → Creating & wiring nodes

Workspace — A saved panel layout you switch between — for example a node-editing setup versus a rendering setup. → Panels & Layout

Glossary

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

See also