4 ms·

What is that? A displacement map or something?

• themodelplumber 4y ago
  That image by itself could be used as a displacement map, bump map, normal map, diffuse texture map, specular reflection map, etc. It's Perlin noise; they picked an example to show, but with varying colors and other parameters it mimics naturally occurring noise functions. You could use that one image and it would be helpful to model an entire universe. Generally it's for achieving natural looks and other effects. Landscapes, nebluae in space, shadows, worn textures on things like wood, variance in grass coverage, etc. But then that's just looks. You could also use it to drive time-based effects, location-based effects, and other patterns that change the dynamics of a scene. It has a prominent distinction to it, but also a subtlety that is very useful. The same combination is not as readily found in other functions.