This means you can share After Effects projects that don’t need to link to image or footage files. Fractal Noise generates textures without any external footage files or assets. For After Effects users, the fractal noise plugin makes it possible to create and share After Effects projects that generate complex images without any external footage files.
#Ultra fractal animation posting to da code#
For this reason, many effects in games are created using fractal noise – it’s faster to generate the image than it is to load it from a file, and the code takes up a fraction of the storage space and memory than a pre-rendered asset would. Images and video files can easily be megabytes, if not hundreds of megabytes (or gigabytes!) in size – but by using fractal noise, the same result can be generated with only a few key parameters. Secondly, the settings to generate an image are much smaller than the image file itself. Firstly, the user has a great deal of control over the image being generated, including resolution, tileability, loopability, animation speed and so on. What makes fractal noise so useful is that it’s a tool for generating images, which provides the user with two key benefits over using existing images or footage. On the right is a fractal landscape generated on a Commodore Amiga, using the “Vista Pro” package. Star Trek II (left) is one of the earliest examples of computer graphics in a Hollywood film, with the landscape for the “terraforming” scene generated with fractal algorithms. Many years later, I’d spend hours generating fractal landscapes using “Vista Pro” on my Amiga. There are a number of websites dedicated to the history of computer graphics, and the landscapes generated with fractal noise for Star Trek II are among the earliest uses of CGI in Hollywood films. A famous early use of fractal noise was in the terraforming scenes in “Star Trek II”, and Ken Perlin eventually won an Oscar recognising his efforts in 1997. In many fields of computer graphics fractal noise is called “ Perlin Noise”, and a quick Google search will reveal lots of information on the principle, and how it has been implemented in everything from blockbuster films to computer games. The concept was developed for Hollywood in the early 80s by a remarkable guy called Ken Perlin. What is it good for?įractal noise, as an algorithm or technique, is not unique to After Effects. So, fifteen years after the fractal noise plugin became available to all After Effects users, let’s re-visit this incredibly useful tool. While some of my older tutorials have undoubtedly dated, the fractal noise plugin hasn’t changed. However, fifteen years later, it looks like all of my old articles and tutorials have been removed as part of an overhaul and re-design of the Creative Cow site. How could the same algorithm be used to generate realistic landscapes, clouds, water and fire effects? To celebrate the release of After Effects version 7, I decided to deep-dive into the fractal noise effect, and published an article on the Creative Cow website, where I’d been posting tutorials since 2002. On a personal note, fractals had always fascinated me, and I was intrigued by the way that the fractal noise plugin could be used to create such a wide range of images. The Fractal Noise effects controls, in all its glory Suddenly they had a whole new range of toys to play with – including Fractal Noise. But still, in 2006 it was pretty exciting news for After Effects users with the Standard Edition. With the launch of After Effects CS 3 Adobe scrapped the two-tier system altogether, and ever since then After Effects has just been “After Effects”. But in 2006, when Adobe released After Effects version 7, they decided to include all plugins with the Standard Edition, and not limit them to the Production Bundle. Initially, many plugins were only included with the “Production Bundle”, including the keying and matte plugins, all of the CC effects – and Fractal Noise. It was written by Jens Enqvist and Nils Schneider at Cycore, the same company that had created the “Final Effects” plugins a few years earlier.Īdobe bought the plugins in 2001, but way back then After Effects came in two different versions – the cheaper “Standard Edition”, and the more expensive “Production Bundle”. The Fractal Noise plugin was originally a 3 rd party product that came in a pack called “Cult FX”. Fractal Noise is the most verstaile plugin that comes with After Effects – at least that’s what I wrote fifteen years ago, in 2006.
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