Animating with the Noise SOP
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Overview:
The Noise SOP is often used to create pseudo random deformations to SOPs. It can be used to change point, normal, and color alpha, and texture coordinates for SOPs with varying results.
In this example we use a Sphere SOP that’s configured as a mesh, and then feed the Sphere SOP to a Noise SOP whose target attribute is Point Normals. Normals, among other things, are used in the lighting calculations when rendering. A “normal” is the line perpendicular to the surface. Adding noise to our point normals can give the illusion of the geometry shape changing, even though the points of the shape are not moving. In this example the display for our point normals is turned on so we can better see this in relation to our geometry.
References:
- SOPs – Derivative Wiki
- Sphere SOP – Derivative Wiki
- Noise SOP – Derivative Wiki