noise
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Just applying noise itself to modulate
surface color has some utility,
but only in limited situations.
It's great for making objects appear subtly "dirty" or worn
by adding color variations over a surface.
You can also use it to vary a specular power,
to give that cool "worn metal" look.
That's actually the first thing I used it for in 1983.
If you use the gradient of noise to vary the surface normal, you can get bumpy surfaces. If you animate these, or add several of them animating independently, you get nice water wave effects - especially if you bias the noise downward. That makes the tops of the waves look slightly pointy, which approximates the cycloids formed by real water waves (check out my 1985 SIGGRAPH paper to see more examples of this). To get more advanced effects, you need to combine noise at different frequencies. Which leads us to... |