The texture animator

This paper discusses three distinct techniques for the animation of procedural textures and describes a software tool. Animation is attained by moving the rendered point before the texture evaluation, changing the definition of the texture space or changing the texture colour mapping. Examples are given for textures based on noise and turbulence functions in order to simulate natural phenomena. Some phases of the texture animation process can be automated using a code generator supported by a library of animation effects. Aspects of practical implementation are discussed and Renderman compliant code is presented.