Ken Perlin was the first person to get an Academy Award for computer graphics in a film for the 1980's classic "Tron". He developed a technique for producing natural appearing textures on computer generated surfaces, using noise algorithms. This technique for production of noise can be used to produce all kinds of interesting effects and textures, including wood, marble, clouds, smoke and all kinds of other textures.
Thinking out of the square, we wanted to create a cool-looking mask effect for an image gallery and the idea we came up with was to create a mask that travels either horizontally or vertically, masking or un-masking an image. But we wanted to do this in a seemingly random way and to make it show and hide in a way that seemed somewhat pixelated or "blocky". To do this we used Perlin Noise to create the "map" of the motion of the mask. We also built the program to have the ability to change the definition of the blocks, the definition of the noise map that is used, the speed of the masking / unmasking and the direction of the motion of the mask.
A seemingly simple effect has produced quite cool results and due to the fact that we used perlin noise to produce the masking effect, every time the mask is produced (each time the application is loaded) the mask is different.
You can check the effect out on the home page of the CruDigital website - it is the masking effect on the featured gallery in the middle at the top of the main page.
