splatting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of splat.

   Paint was splatting across the canvas as she flung the loaded brush.

   We could hear the eggs splatting on the sidewalk below.

   Note

   The -ing form doubles the final t, as short verbs ending in one vowel and one consonant do: splat, splatting. It serves every verb use of splat. Eggs or rain splatting on a surface is intransitive. Splatting paint across a wall is transitive. Graphics developers speak of splatting textures, the verb behind the texture-blending technique. As a gerund it shades into the sound or action itself.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The sound or motion produced when something soft or wet strikes a surface and spreads on impact.

   The splatting of mud against the windshield grew louder as the truck sped up.

   Every footstep set off splatting in the flooded basement.

   Similarsplattering, splashing, spattering, squelching

   Note

   As a noun it usually names a continuing run of impacts rather than a single one, and it is typically framed as the splatting of something on or against a surface: water on a stone floor, mud on glass. One impact is more naturally a splat. The plural splattings exists for separate occurrences, but the word is mostly used without one.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   A method for combining different textures by applying an alpha channel map to the higher levels, so the layers underneath show through where the map is partly or fully transparent.

   Like layering colored glass panes, where clear patches let the colors below show through.

   The terrain engine relies on splatting to transition between sand, grass, and stone.

   By adjusting the alpha map, the developer controlled how the splatting revealed the rock beneath.

   Similarblending

   Note

   A computer-graphics term with a known coiner: Charles Bloom gave the technique this name, reusing an everyday word. Its natural home is terrain, where sand, grass and rock are stacked as layers and the alpha map decides which one shows at each point. Developers use the verb as well and speak of splatting a texture onto a landscape. The noun usually takes no plural.

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