Looking Outwards : 06

Perlin noise was created by Ken Perlin in 1983 for a film he was working on, Tron. 35 years ago, Ken Perlin won an academic award for discovering the technique now called “Perlin Noise.” Perlin noise is described as a type of gradient noise that interpolates random values to create smooth transitions through the noise function. It helped him add randomness to CG renderings of natural elements like smoke, fire, and water. Its flexibility in mathematical expressions allowed perlin noise to be used to create a wide variety of textures that imitate the controlled random appearance of textures in nature.

In our architecture studio under Dana Cupkova, we are exploring randomness using keyshotand other rendering tools such as grasshopper and kangaroo and it was extremely interesting to read about a similar concept but in a different perspective altogether. I was extremely inspired by how random yet sophisticated his textures look and surprised that something computer generated could still have that level of detail. In real life we take textures like this for granted and do not realise the amount of work that goes into creating smooth transitions.