The Scene Description Language is intended to describe a scene. It is not meant for interaction. When Alias|Wavefront created SDL, the most important consideration was its ability to clearly and succinctly describe a scene. This includes sufficient scope to describe all aspects of a scene.
The above considerations argued for a language rich in nouns and adjectives, with fewer verbs. In terms of computer language design, that means many data types with many optional modifiers and relatively few operations. The bulk of this document, therefore, deals with data.
We have tried to keep the the vocabulary in this document strictly defined. For example, each data type has a unique name. That name is not used with any other meaning in this document.
This document does not include a glossary, since any description of the terms used would simply repeat the description of the language feature. Please check the table of contents for any term which is unfamiliar, since most terms important to SDL have their own section.
Three-dimensional coordinates and directions are specified using the x,y,z system, corresponding to the system used by the modeller.
Reserved words are printed in bold.
There are six sections in this part of the manual:
Starting with version 7, some keywords have shorter "nicknames", allowing smaller file sizes and easier typing. For example you can now use cl instead of cluster, inst instead of instance, pc instead of parameter_curve, and so on.