Projects

Procedural Textures

 
Noise is a texturing primitive you can use to create a very wide variety of natural looking textures. Combining noise into various mathematical expressions produces procedural texture. Unlike traditional texture mapping, procedural texture doesn't require a source texture image. As a result, the bandwidth requirements for transmitting or storing procedural textures are essentially zero. Also, procedural texture can be applied directly onto a three dimensional object. This avoids the "mapping problem" of traditional texture mapping. Instead of trying to figure out how to wrap a two dimensional texture image around a complex object, you can just dip the object into a soup of procedural texture material. Essentially, the virtual object is carved out of a virtual solid material defined by the procedural texture. For this reason, procedural textures are sometimes called solid texture.

Related links

• Hypertexture
• Fractal Planet
• Noise c code
• Check out Ken Perlin's history and how-to site called Making Noise.

People

• Ken Perlin

Papers

Live Paint: Painting with Procedural Multiscale Textures

Perlin, K.

Computer Graphics, Vol. 28, No. 3.

Texturing and Modeling, A Procedural Approach by David Ebert, et al

Perlin, K.

AP Professional, Cambridge, 1994. chapter is entitled: Noise, Hypertexture, Antialiasing and Gesture

Procedural Texture Synthesis

Perlin, K.

section in Computer Graphics Encyclopedia, Kodansha Dai-Ichi Shuppan Publishing, Tokyo.

Synopsis of how to use parametrically controlled procedural models to create widely varying visual textures.

Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics

Perlin, K.

Article on Perceptually Based Textures. Nov 1990, Kodansha LTD., Tokyo.

Hypertexture

Perlin, K. with Eric Hoffert

1989 Computer Graphics (proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH Conference), Vol. 22, No. 3.

Procedurally generated textures evaluated throughout volumes to synthesize the appearance of highly textural shapes: flame, fluids, eroded materials, fur. An extension of results from {\it Image Synthesizer} paper to shape synthesis.

An Image Synthesizer

Perlin, K.

Computer Graphics, Vol. 19, No. 3. (also in Computer Graphics: Image Synthesis, IEEE, Salem, 1988)

Combines five ideas for visual texture synthesis: (i) 3D space as the texture domain, (ii) an intermediate ``point/normal pixel'' format, (iii) allow arbitrary procedural mappings from point/normal pixels to intensity, (iv) a powerful primitive for introducing controllable noise, (v) an interactive language and environment for texture design. Used to create realistic visual textures of: marble, water waves, fire, clouds, oil films.