#simplex noise

For this animation, I generated a random, hatched background, and then mask it out. The mask shapes are made using simplex noise. Specifically I used an implementation of simplex noise by Kurt Spencer called Open Simplex Noise found here: https://gist.github.com/KdotJPG/b1270127455a94ac5d19

I used this external noise generator because the Perlin Noise generator built into Processing only goes up to 3 dimensions, but I needed 4: width, height, and then two extra dimensions to travel through time in a circular motion. If I wasn’t trying to make a looping animation, I could have done with only 3 dimensions as I wouldn’t have needed an extra dimension to loop back, i.e. my motion through time would have been a 1-dimensional line rather than a 2-dimensional circle.

Also, simplex noise is supposedly cleaner (fewer directional artifacts) and faster than Perlin Noise.

That being said, this animation took longer than usual to to render. In most of my animations, each frame is usually generated and then saved in maybe 0.25 of a second. But while rendering this one, each frame takes about 5 seconds to generate and save. There are several factors that I think play into this. First, I’m using a lot of off screen PGraphics renderers to create images and masks which I’ve noticed slow down a program. I guess using them and creating them is CPU intensive. Second, using 4D noise is inherently slower than calculating noise in lower dimensions.