This page is dedicated to the windows program 'PerlinTool'. It is a small and simple program, which generates nice looking images using nothing but random numbers and a clever technique invented by Ken Perlin.
I used code based on the perlin noise principles a year ago and generated an image that I have used as desktop ever since. I recently sat down to learn C# and needed a good idea for a program to write. What better than to bring perlin noise to the masses?
The program allows interactive tuning of all involved parameters. This is accomplished with a built-in image preview utility.
The program supports output in each of the following image formats: bmp, jpg, png, gif, and ico. Any choice of resolution will work as well.
Apart from the obvious visual qualities of the images, game developers should find the tool useful for generating textures resembling various life like materials such as wood and marble. An alternative use is to generate height maps with the tool. Impressive hilly landscapes may be generated automatically in this manner.
The program is free and easy to use. Go ahead and download it. You know you want to :) (broken link has been fixed).
The link above is to the windows installer file. If you prefer to just download the zip'ed .exe file, you can get that here.
The graphical user interface of the program is kept simple. You can see for yourself in the screenshot:
The thumbnails show examples of the kind of images that may be produced with the program (click to enlarge):
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The program is still a work in progress, so feel free to send me any comments, suggestions or bugreports you might have. Until now, the program has evolved as listed in the following.
| Aug-2005 | First version up and running. |
| Aug-2005 | Added support for arbitrary number of color layers. |
| Aug-2005 | Made it possible to save a configuration to disk (.pt files), and to load it again. |
| Aug-2005 | Put together a windows installer, to make users feel right at home. :) |
| Aug-2005 | Made the program spawn threads when generating images, to give a better interactive feel. |
| Aug-2005 | Now you can shift the layers left and right |
| Aug-2005 | Fixed thread priorities for improved GUI responsiveness. |
| Aug-2005 | Fixed problem with crashes on systems with hyper threading. |
| Sep-2005 | Added support for associating .pt files with PerlinTool. Double clicking a .pt then starts up PerlinTool and loads the contents. |