What's causing this pitting I applied a noise texture for some displacement on my cupcake, and now I'm getting weird artefacts. I, however, can't tell if this is due to my atrocious modeling skills or something in the nodes. It could be due to the way I unwrapped the model too though.
Secondary question: what's the semantic difference between model and mesh?

I know there's something going wrong in here.
The correct way to connect a procedural or B&amp;W texture using a Displacement node is like this (no need for the Normal Map node - that is reserved for data from a &quot;proper&quot; normal map such as the purplish looking bitmap images I've sure you've seen):

However, if you are using EEVEE, or are only looking to generate the look of displacement (without needing a heavily subdivided mesh), you will probably find it works just as well to connect the texture through a Bump Node, and using it's output as Normal data:

To answer your second question - there is really no difference between a mesh and a model (two ways of describing the same thing), however some people might use the word model to imply a fully finished product (not just a mesh, but a textured mesh, or a mesh rigged for animation, etc...)