I’ve just heard about this stuff, and somehow it is used both for generating randomised numbers and also in 3d graphics for movies and video games. As well as various other things.
I’m a bit mind blown and confused
In: Technology
It’s a way of generating “random” gradients that are still relatively controlled. This makes lots of random-ish natural things look more realistic: fireballs, forests, landscapes, plants, etc.
You don’t want true random for that type of stuff, like TV static, because in the real world they obey physics/biology/etc. and that limits how much and how fast things can vary.
Perlin noise is a relatively simple computer algorithm to generate a gradient in however many dimensions you need (2D, 3D, etc.) that looks random but is also nicely smooth and has the same scale across the features so it looks realistic.
Coherent noise generates smoothly varying randomness in n dimensions. Multiple copies of it at different frequencies can be combined in different ways to produce a wide variety of effects, particularly for terrain or texture generation.
Actual “Perlin” noise is an older formula for coherent noise, which produces a lot of 45 and 90 degree bias. I recommend using a “Simplex” type noise instead. OpenSimplex and OpenSimplex2(S) are some algorithms I’ve put out there so that people can avoid IP claims while using them.
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