3D Game Glossary: The Modeling Terms That Help Flikk Build Your 3D Game
Mesh, collider, pivot point, trigger zone. Plain definitions of the 3D terms game developers use, with words you can type straight into Flikk.
In this article
You want a door that swings open from its hinge, not from its middle. In 3D, that's called the pivot point. You want the lava to send you back to the last checkpoint. That's a kill zone and a checkpoint. Game developers have a short word for almost everything you can picture in a 3D game.
You don't need any of these words to make a 3D game on Flikk. One sentence about what the player does is enough. But when we describe our 3D games with them, the companion (the little green robot that hands you your game plan) gets much closer to what we had in mind. This glossary explains the 3D terms we find most useful, in plain words, with a sentence you can type straight into the Create tab.
Quick note: Flikk is our app. The examples from Lava Leap, Cliff Diver Pro and Cluck and Boom come from real games we made or played on Flikk. The "Say it like this" sentences are ideas to try, not prompts we've built. Game names mentioned as examples belong to their owners. Flikk isn't affiliated with them.
How to use these words in Flikk
In 3D, Flikk picks the 3D models it needs from your idea. You don't pick a look first like in 2D. So these words aren't buttons in an editor. They're a short way to tell Flikk what you see in your head.
- Name it, then describe it. "A spinning blade with its pivot point at one end" is clearer than "a blade that swings around kind of like a clock hand."
- Use them in the first sentence. Flikk turns your idea into a game plan with a quick sketch and the rules. Read it before you tap Build it, and check your terms made it in.
- Use Make Edits for the details. Build first, then tune: "Make the lava emissive so it glows." Each edit takes about 5 minutes.
Before it builds anything, the companion shows you what it understood: "Here's your game." Here's the game plan it made for Lava Leap, a 3D platformer we built:
Looking for camera words like isometric, first-person or follow cam? They're in our Mobile Game Glossary, together with joysticks and other touch controls.
Shape and size
These words describe the objects in your world: what they are, how detailed they look and how big they are.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mesh | The 3D shape of an object, made of many small flat faces. Every character, rock and platform is a mesh. | "Use a chunky, rounded mesh for the hero" | Every 3D game |
| Primitive | A basic shape: cube, sphere, cylinder or capsule. Great for a clean, simple look. | "Build the level only from primitives: cubes, spheres and cylinders" | Roblox obbies |
| Low-poly / high-poly | How many faces a mesh has (its polycount). Low-poly looks faceted and simple, high-poly looks smooth and detailed. | "A low-poly forest with faceted trees" | Cliff Diver Pro (on Flikk) |
| Voxel | A world built from small cubes, like 3D pixels. | "A voxel island made of little cubes" | Minecraft, Crossy Road |
| Scale | How big an object is compared to the player and the world. | "Make the mushrooms giant, three times the size of the player" | Katamari Damacy |
| Pivot point (origin) | The point an object rotates or scales around. A door turns around its hinge; a spinning blade turns around its center. | "A hammer that swings with its pivot point at the top of the handle" | Obstacle courses, swinging doors |
Why the pivot point matters
Spinning and swinging obstacles are a big part of 3D platformers. Flikk's sketch for Lava Leap already had a spinning blade and a spiked ball on a chain. Whether a hammer swings from the top of its handle or spins around its middle changes how you dodge it, so say where the pivot point is.
Surface and look
The mesh is the shape. These words describe the surface on top of it and how light hits it.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material | What a surface is made of: metal, wood, stone, glass, ice. | "The platforms are made of shiny metal, the walls of rough stone" | Every 3D game |
| Texture | The image painted onto a mesh, like bricks on a wall or grass on the ground. | "Give the floor a cracked stone texture" | Every 3D game |
| Flat shading / smooth shading | Flat shading shows each face as a hard facet. Smooth shading blends them into soft curves. | "Flat shading for a faceted, low-poly look" | Low-poly indie games |
| Toon shading (cel shading) | A cartoon look with hard-edged shadows and often dark outlines. A shader is the part of the game that decides how light looks on a surface, and toon shading is one kind. | "Toon shading with thick black outlines" | The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Genshin Impact |
| Emissive | A surface that glows by itself, like neon, lava or a magic pickup. | "Make the coins emissive so they glow in the dark" | Lava Leap (on Flikk) |
| Bloom (glow) | A soft halo of light around bright and glowing things. Pairs well with emissive. | "Add bloom so the neon signs glow" | Most neon and space games |
| Transparency (opacity) | How see-through an object is. Good for water, glass, ghosts and force fields. | "Make the ghosts half transparent" | Water and ghosts in most 3D games |
| Color palette | The small set of colors the whole game uses. It keeps a 3D world looking like one place. | "Use a pastel palette: mint, peach and lavender" | Alto's Adventure, Monument Valley |
In Lava Leap, the checkpoint pads glow green and the lava glows orange. Those are emissive surfaces: you see them from far away, so you always know where to go and where not to step.
Physics and collisions
These are the words for what's solid, what moves on its own and what happens when things touch. They matter a lot for fairness: most "that wasn't fair!" moments in 3D games are collision problems.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collider (collision) | The invisible shape the game uses to decide what's solid. Walls and floors have one; decoration like grass often doesn't. | "You can walk through the bushes, but not through the rocks" | Every 3D game |
| Hitbox | The area that counts when something hits or gets hit. A hitbox a little smaller than the character feels fair. | "Make the player's hitbox a bit smaller than the character" | Fighting and action games |
| Trigger zone | An invisible area that starts something when you enter it: a checkpoint, a trap, a door, the finish line. | "When the player walks into the cave, the lights go out" | Lava Leap (on Flikk) |
| Kill zone (kill brick) | A trigger zone that ends your try or sends you back. Lava, spikes, lasers or falling off the map. | "Touching the red lasers sends you back to the last checkpoint" | Roblox obbies, Lava Leap (on Flikk) |
| Rigidbody (physics object) | An object that moves with physics: it falls, rolls, tumbles and can be pushed. | "The crates are physics objects that tumble when you run into them" | Angry Birds, Fall Guys |
| Static vs. dynamic | Static objects never move (floors, walls). Dynamic objects can (crates, balls, moving platforms). | "The pillars are static, but the barrels on top are dynamic" | Every physics game |
| Gravity | How strongly things fall. Low gravity gives floaty jumps; high gravity feels heavy and snappy. | "Low gravity, like on the moon, so jumps feel floaty" | Super Mario Galaxy |
| Friction and bounciness | Friction decides how much things slide; bounciness decides how much they bounce back. | "Make the ice floor slippery and the mushrooms bouncy" | Ice levels in most platformers |
| Knockback | Getting pushed back when you're hit. | "When an enemy hits you, knock the player back a little" | Fall Guys, most action games |
| Ragdoll | A character goes limp and tumbles with physics, usually after a hit or a fall. Often the funniest part of a game. | "When the player falls, they ragdoll down the stairs" | Fall Guys, Human: Fall Flat |
| Projectile | Anything that flies through the air: an arrow, a fireball, an egg. | "Throw fireballs as projectiles in a high arc" | Angry Birds, tower defense games |
Lava Leap uses almost all of these at once. Our edit asked for lasers to jump over, and Flikk made them a kill zone: touch one and you're sent back to the last checkpoint. The glowing pads are trigger zones that save your place.
Movement and animation
These words describe how characters and objects move: how they walk, how a platform glides and how a coin spins.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Idle / walk / run / jump animation | The basic set of moves a character has. Idle is what it does while you're not touching anything. | "Give the character a happy idle animation where it looks around" | Every 3D character game |
| Rig (skeleton) | The hidden bones inside a character mesh that let it bend and animate. In Flikk you don't build rigs, but it's the word behind "the arms move". | "The character's arms and legs move when it runs" | Every animated 3D character |
| Tween (easing) | A smooth movement from one point to another. Easing decides how it starts and stops: slow and soft, or quick and snappy. | "The platform eases in and out at each end instead of stopping hard" | Moving platforms, doors and menus |
| Moving platform | A platform that moves along a path, back and forth or in a loop. You ride it to cross a gap. | "Platforms that move side to side over the lava" | Lava Leap (on Flikk), Super Mario Odyssey |
| Waypoints (patrol path) | Points an enemy or object moves between, one after another. | "Guards walk a patrol path between four points" | Stealth games |
| Looping animation | An animation that repeats forever, like a coin that spins or a pickup that bobs up and down. | "Gems slowly spin and bob up and down" | Collectibles in most 3D platformers |
| Coyote time | A tiny moment after you run off an edge where you can still jump. It makes jumps feel fair. | "Let the player still jump a moment after leaving a platform" | Most modern platformers |
Here's the moving platform from Lava Leap. We asked for "platforms that move side to side" in Make Edits, and Flikk added these metal ones with hazard stripes. You ride them over the lava.
For bigger ideas like the core loop and the difficulty curve, see our Game Design Glossary. For squash and stretch, screen shake and other "game feel" words, see the Mobile Game Glossary.
Light and atmosphere
Light sets the mood of a 3D world faster than anything else. The same level feels cozy in warm sunset light and creepy in blue fog.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Directional light | Light that comes from one direction everywhere, like the sun. | "Low evening sun from the left, with long shadows" | Most outdoor 3D games |
| Point light | Light that shines in all directions from one spot, like a lamp, a torch or a campfire. | "Torches on the walls that light up the corridor" | Dungeon games |
| Spotlight | A cone of light, like a flashlight or a stage light. | "The player carries a flashlight that lights a cone in front of them" | Horror games |
| Ambient light | The overall brightness of the scene, even in the shadows. Low ambient light makes a dark, moody world. | "Very low ambient light, so only the torches light the cave" | Horror and cave levels |
| Shadows | Dark shapes objects cast on the ground. They help you judge where you'll land after a jump. | "Clear shadows under the player so jumps are easier to judge" | Every 3D platformer |
| Fog | Haze that fades far-away things. It adds depth and mood. | "Thick green fog in the swamp" | Silent Hill, spooky levels |
| Skybox | The background around the whole world: sky, clouds, stars or space. | "A purple night sky with two moons" | Every 3D game with a sky |
| Particles | Lots of tiny effects together: sparks, dust, smoke, rain, confetti, explosions. | "Sparks fly when the hammer hits the floor" | Cluck and Boom (on Flikk) |
Shadows are worth asking for in any 3D game where you jump. In the Lava Leap screenshots above, the player's shadow on the ground helps you judge each jump.
In Cluck and Boom, a 3D game on Flikk, an egg doesn't just land. It goes off in a big orange explosion of particles.
Cliff Diver Pro shows a few of these terms at once. The islands and rocks are low-poly, with big flat faces, and the islands farther away fade into a light haze, like fog.
World and level
These words describe how the world is laid out and where things appear.
| Term | What it means | Say it like this | You've seen it in |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terrain | The ground and landscape: hills, valleys, beaches, cliffs. | "Rolling green hills with a river through the middle" | Open-world games |
| Modular pieces (tiles) | Levels built from a few repeating pieces that snap together, like straight paths, corners and ramps. | "Build the levels from modular stone tiles" | Roblox obbies, Crossy Road |
| Spawn point | Where the player, enemies or items appear. | "Enemies spawn from the three caves at the edge of the map" | Most action games |
| Checkpoint (respawn) | A saved spot you come back to after you fail, instead of the start. | "A checkpoint every five platforms" | Lava Leap (on Flikk), most platformers |
| Procedural generation | The game builds new levels by itself from rules, so every run is different. Great for highscore games. | "Every run, generate a new random path of platforms" | Minecraft, endless runners |
Putting it together
Here's the same 3D game described two ways.
Without the words:
"A game where a little robot runs through a factory and there are these big hammers that swing down and if they hit you, you have to start over, but only from the last green thing, and the lights are kind of dark and red, and there are boxes you can knock over."
With the words:
"A low-poly 3D platformer in a dark factory. Hammers swing with their pivot point at the top. Touching a hammer sends you back to the last checkpoint. Checkpoints are glowing green trigger zones. Red point lights, low ambient light and some fog. Crates are physics objects you can knock over."
The second one isn't much shorter, but it leaves far fewer questions open: how the hammers move, what happens when they hit you, where you restart, what the light looks like and which objects react to you. That's what makes the game plan come out the way you pictured it.
This is an example prompt, not one we've built yet. Try it, check the game plan, and fix what's missing with Make Edits.
Try any term: Flikk tells you if it can't
Try any 3D term you like, from this page or from anywhere else. If Flikk can't build something yet, Make Edits shows a short warning ("Flikk can't make that one") and asks you to describe how the game should play, look or sound instead. Nothing gets built and nothing in your game changes. We tried to switch a game to tilt controls, and this is what we got:
Missing a term, or found one that works really well? Tell us at help@getflikk.com, or in the Flikk creator Discord. Once you've made your first game, open the Profile tab, go to Your Games and tap Link Discord to join.
Try it yourself
Pick two or three terms from this page that match the 3D game in your head. Open the Create tab, switch to 3D, describe your game in a sentence or two, and Flikk builds it in about 15 minutes. Then play it, and use the words above to tell Flikk what to change. New to 3D on Flikk? Our guide to making a 3D game without coding walks you through every step.
Flikk is free on iOS and Android, and making games is free to start.
Download Flikk on iOS · Download Flikk on Android
FAQ
What are the basic 3D modeling terms?
The most important ones are mesh (the 3D shape), material and texture (what the surface looks like), collider (what's solid), pivot point (what an object turns around), and lighting terms like directional light, shadows and fog. With those, you can describe most 3D games clearly.
What's the difference between a mesh, a material and a texture?
The mesh is the shape, the material is what it's made of (metal, stone, glass), and the texture is the image painted on it. A crate is a cube mesh with a wood material and a plank texture.
What's the difference between a collider and a hitbox?
A collider decides what's solid: what you can stand on and can't walk through. A hitbox decides what counts as a hit. A character usually has both, and a hitbox a little smaller than the character makes a game feel fairer.
Do I need to know 3D modeling to make a 3D game?
No. On Flikk you describe your game in a sentence, and Flikk picks the 3D models and builds the game in about 15 minutes. The terms help when you want something specific, like glowing lava or a hammer that swings from the top.
Is Flikk free?
Flikk is free on iOS and Android, and making games is free to start. A new game costs 100 Tokens and each edit costs 25 Tokens. Flikk is available in the US.
