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Perlin noise
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Perlin noise is procedural texture primitive that is widely used by visual effects artists to increase the appearance of realism in computer graphics. The function has a pseudo-random appearance, yet all of its visual details are the same size (see image). This property allows it to be readily controllable; multiple scaled copies of Perlin noise can be inserted into mathematical expressions to create a great variety of procedural textures. Synthetic texture using Perlin noise is often used in CGI to make computer-generated objects more natural-looking, by imitating the controlled random appearance of textures of nature.
It resulted from the work of Ken Perlin, who developed it while working at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc.. In 1997 he won a Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for this contribution.
Perlin noise is implemented as a
function of either (x,y,z) or (x,y,z,time) which uses
interpolation between a set of pre-calculated gradient vectors to construct a value that varies pseudo-randomly over space and/or time.
Ken Perlin improved the implementation in 2002, suppressing some visual artifacts (see the external links).
Perlin noise is widely used in
computer graphics for effects like fire, smoke, and clouds. It is also frequently used to generate textures when memory is extremely limited, such as in
demos, and is increasingly finding use on
Graphics Processing Units for real-time graphics in computer games.
See also