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OpenSimplex noise is an n-dimensional (up to 4D) gradient noise function that was developed in order to overcome the patent-related issues surrounding simplex noise, while likewise avoiding the visually-significant directional artifacts characteristic of Perlin noise.
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The algorithm shares numerous similarities with simplex noise, but has two primary differences:
- Whereas simplex noise starts with a hypercubic honeycomb and squashes it down the main diagonal in order to form its grid structure, [1] OpenSimplex noise instead swaps the skew and inverse-skew factors and uses a stretched hypercubic honeycomb. The stretched hypercubic honeycomb becomes a simplicial honeycomb after subdivision. [2] This means that 2D Simplex and 2D OpenSimplex both use different orientations of the triangular tiling, but whereas 3D Simplex uses the tetragonal disphenoid honeycomb, 3D OpenSimplex uses the tetrahedral-octahedral honeycomb. [2]
- OpenSimplex noise uses a larger kernel size than simplex noise. The result is a smoother appearance at the cost of performance, as additional vertices need to be determined and factored into each evaluation. [2]
OpenSimplex has a variant called "SuperSimplex" (or OpenSimplex2S), which is visually smoother. "OpenSimplex2F" is identical to the original SuperSimplex.
