A texture map that fakes small surface direction changes so lighting reacts as if extra detail exists.
A normal map changes the way light reads a surface without adding actual geometry. It is built from the concept of Normals and is common in game art, product rendering, and real-time assets. It is often used with a Height Map and needs suitable Texel Density to look sharp.
Direction vectors that tell software which way a surface or vertex is facing for shading and visibility.
Normals are invisible direction markers used by 3D software to shade surfaces and determine which way faces point. Clean normals help models shade correctly, especially around beveled edges. Broken or flipped normals can make a mesh render strangely, and normal maps use normal direction data to fake fine detail.
NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, a curve and surface representation often used for smooth CAD-style forms.
NURBS are mathematically defined curves and surfaces. They are common in CAD, product design, and tools focused on precision surfaces. Blender supports NURBS, but many Blender workflows convert forms to mesh geometry made of Vertices for editing, UVs, subdivision, and rendering. Plasticity is a modern example of software built around CAD-style modeling.