A new way to do relief mapping that reduces the artifacts from the traditional way. The technique requires a prerendering of a cone map from the depth map (nearly the same as height map but only lowers the geometry).

Link to the paper
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/books/gpu_gems_3/samples/gems3_ch18.pdf

A method to give materials a thickness property so light can shine through them. The thickness is saved as a alphachannel in which a higher value means thinner material (more light can shine through).

Link to the paper:
http://research.microsoft.com/~ppsloan/ldprt_final05.pdf

Shading is the result from applying a lightning technique on a rendered object. There are three common types of shading.

Flat (left image): The lightning is calculated per face

Gouraud (middle image): The lightning is calculated per vertex and for each pixel the result is interpolated from the vertices of the face that the pixel belongs to.

Phong (right image): The lightning is calculated per pixel.