Carly Sacco – Looking Outwards-06

Perlin Noise is a visual representation of what “natural” texture and surfaces that were created to contrast with the “machine – like” look of graphics at the time. Although the algorithm is simple, the components of it are kept simple. The images are produced off of a box – grid system with random gradient vectors, computation of the dot products of the distance and gradient vectors, and an interpolation between these. Random number generators can be used and by the altering of the algorithm, different images can appear every time.

Ken Perlin invented this algorithm in 1983 because he wanted there to be a way for something natural to appear even on a screen. After creating this algorithm he was awarded an Academy Award for Technical Achievement and continued to use the algorithm for texture synthesis and 3D implecations.