Noise is cool!

I've recently stumbled across Perlin noise.
It is a (rather classic) clever trick for generation of nice-looking procedural textures; it has been used to generate special effects like fire, water and clouds.

I did some (silly) experiments in javascript using the new HTML element canvas... and if you can take it easy and wait for the slow computation to happen, here you have some clouds generated with Perlin noise: code.

- short definition at wikipedia (here)
- applications: here, here and here.
- theory and code: here, here and here.

There is also a tutorial from the author Ken Perlin: here (with source code).

However the best article, more clear and usable is probably this one: dev_mag issue 20 page 29-34.