Ray Tracing from the Ground Up

Chapter 31

Noise-Based Textures

Image courtesy of Mark Langsworth

Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should:

• understand the desirable properties of noise functions for texture synthesis;
• understand how to construct and interpolate 3D lattice noises;
• understand how sums of lattice noises can be used to construct the fractal sum, turbulence, and fractional Brownian motion functions;
• have implemented a variety of noise-based textures, including marble and sandstone.

A characteristic of natural textures is their randomness. They may contain structures or colors that repeat, but the exact details are always different. Stones, woods, and ...