Perlin noise

A graph made using perlin noise

Randomly generated lines

Perlin noise was made by Ken Perlin in 1983. He made it because when computers created pictures that were supposed to look natural, they didn't look very good. Noise can be used to draw things that look natural, like clouds or smoke. It helps computer artists draw patterns that look more real.

In 1997, Perlin was awarded an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for discovering the algorithm:

To Ken Perlin for the development of Perlin Noise, a technique used to produce natural appearing textures on computer generated surfaces for motion picture visual effects. The development of Perlin Noise has allowed computer graphics artists to better represent the complexity of natural phenomena in visual effects for the motion picture industry.

Perlin Noise Media

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  Two-dimensional slice through 3D Perlin noise at z = 0

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  A virtual landscape generated using Perlin noise

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  A virtual organic surface generated with Perlin noise

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  Perlin noise rescaled and added into itself to create fractal noise. At each step, noise frequency is doubled and amplitude is halved.

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  2-D Perlin noise with a contour line at zero, showing that the noise is zero at the gradient mesh intersections

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  A two-dimensional grid of gradient vectors

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  The dot product of each point with its nearest grid node gradient value. The dot product with the other three nodes in the cell is not shown.

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  The final interpolated result