Abstract
Procedural noise functions are widely used in Computer Graphics,
from off-line rendering in movie production to interactive video
games. The ability to add complex and intricate details at low
memory and authoring cost is one of its main attractions. This
state-of-the-art report is motivated by the inherent importance of
noise in graphics, the widespread use of noise in industry, and the
fact that many recent research developments justify the need for an
up-to-date survey. Our goal is to provide both a valuable entry
point into the field of procedural noise functions, as well as a
comprehensive view of the field to the informed reader. In this
report, we cover procedural noise functions in all their aspects.
We outline recent advances in research on this topic, discussing
and comparing recent and well established methods. We first
formally define procedural noise functions based on stochastic
processes and then classify and review existing procedural noise
functions. We discuss how procedural noise functions are used for
modeling and how they are applied on surfaces. We then introduce
analysis tools and apply them to evaluate and compare the major
approaches to noise generation. We finally identify several
directions for future work. |
