R & D / RnD
Research and Development; Usually a department or a team responsible for exploring, creating and testing new ideas, projects, processes, tools, or workflow before rolled out in production.

rack focus
A camera movement or technique where the focus of the lens changes during one continuous shot.

range (in Excel)
All the cells within the selection.

range of motion
An exploration of different poses or movement of an object.

ray tracing
A type of rendering that mimics the light’s natural behaviour; used for photorealistic renders.

Re:
Used at the start of an email’s/document’s subject line to indicate “in the matter of” or “in reference to” the outlined subject.

real time
To view the rendered version of a scene in “live” as you navigate through the scene/UI, without needing to send it to a render farm or load an image sequence to play and view.

Rebelway
An online VFX school.

rec709
A type of colour space. In my experience, often mentioned when reviewing in RV.

redo
To rework or revisit a task/deliverable.

reels / demo reels
A series of shots that showcase an artist’s past work.

ref / reference
An image or footage that is meant as a baseline or inspiration for a task.

reflection pass
A type of render pass that only contains the image’s reflection. Separated on its own to allow artists better control later in the pipe when integrating it in shot.

refraction / reflection
Attributes that are adjusted in Look Dev to control how light reacts on an object’s material and or surface.

reframe
To adjust the objects or the camera position.

render / rendering
To export the individual frames that make up a turntable or shot.

render farm
A resource dedicated to rendering. The size of the available farm determines how many renders a facility is able to output at a given time.

Analogy: A shot is composed of multiple individual images (called frames) played rapidly to simulate movement. Think of each frame like a piece of paper being printed. The more printers you have and how fast they are, will determine how many frames or pages you can produce at a given time. The less you have, the slower you can produce.

render queue
A list of jobs, passes, or files waiting to be processed on the farm.

render wrangler
Someone who helps maintain and prioritize the jobs/allocation on the render farm.

RenderMan
A CG rendering software.

resolution
The frame’s/image’s number of pixels in one row horizontally and in one column vertically. The higher the resolution, the higher detail. This is different from aspect ratio, which describes the shape of the image.

resource leveling
A project management term meaning to balance the resource availability (and avoid overallocation) and capacity by adjusting the schedule, assigned tasks, or number of resources available.

respeed
To alter the previous or default frame rate.

retopo / retopology
CG models are composed of polygonal shapes connected together by vertices and lines/edges. Sort of like paper crafting.

Retopology is adjusting the makeup of a model’s wireframe or linework in order to optimize it for a specific need. This results in a lower-poly (less polygons) mesh making the model lighter to load in software and faster to work with.

reverse shot
When the camera is placed on the opposite perspective of the previous shot.

RGB
A colour system; Colours are in the spectrum of combining the red, green, and blue.

Rigging Department
Adds control to a model so that artists can move a 3D object.

rim light
A type of light placed behind an object or character thus creating a thin light around the edges of the object/character when seen through the perspective of the camera. This helps them pop.

ROI
(1) Return of Investment; the amount of what can be gained in exchange for the cost spent.

(2) Region of Interest; where we should be looking.

roll
A camera move where the camera itself stays in place but tilts left / right.

RoM / Range of Motion
A range of motion test or RoM is a series of movement/animation to stress test a particular rig. This helps determine any further modeling or rigging changes needed to an asset or to set limitations on how far an asset can be pushed.

rotoscope / rotoscoping
Sometimes shortened to “roto” or “rotoing.” Masking out specific objects in a scene frame by frame, to split the elements of a shot into separate layers.

Sample: Separating the FG, the actors, and the BG

This enables Comp to weave in different effects or CG into the shot (like an explosion/smoke/CG cape) while maintaining a correct DoF.

rough cut
A draft or early version of an edit or boards.

RSMB / ReelSmart Motion Blur
A plugin that helps speed up the time it takes to manually track and apply motion blur.

Rule of Thirds
If an image is to be split into 3 (horizontally/vertically/both), Rule of Thirds is a type of composition where the most interesting subject is placed on the spot where the dividing lines meet.

runner
Sometimes Production Assistant; An entry level role in Production usually responsible for administrative tasks and day to day office maintenance. Varies per studio.

runtime
The total length of time of a sequence, episode, scene, or film.

RV
A common software used in reviews / dailies.