CG programming for non-programmers, lesson 25

The noise function doesn’t really do all that much by itself. It’s when you use it in creative ways that things really start happening. And that is just what we do in lesson 25.

For example, a single frequency of noise looks kind of boring: It creates textures of just one size. But if you scale the argument to the noise function, that will change the frequency of the resulting texture. The more you scale up the argument, the higher frequency will be the result, and the finer will be the resulting texture.

Just like mixing musical notes of different frequencies to create chords, we can mix different frequencies of noise to create more interesting textures. For example, by summing together octaves** of noise we can create fractal-like textures.

You can see this lesson by CLICKING HERE.

** An “octave” in music is a power of two in frequency. For example, the A below middle C on a piano keyboard is a sound that vibrates 440 times per second. The next higher A on the piano — one octave higher — is a sound that vibrates 880 times per second. So for every successive octave, frequency doubles. We use the word “octave” in exactly the same way, except that we apply it to visual texture. For example, if we vary a wiggly texture so that it wiggles twice as many times across the screen, we say that the frequency of the new texture is one octave higher.

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