I can wrap my head around using a 2D Perlin noise function to generate the height value but I don’t understand why a 3D Perlin noise function would be used. In Notch’s blog, he mentioned using a 3D Perlin noise function for the terrain generation on Minecraft. Does anyone know how that would be done and why it would be useful? If you are passing x, y, and z values doesn’t that imply you already have the height?
I can wrap my head around using a 2D Perlin noise function to generate
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Well, Minecraft is about Mines. So, what Notch tried to solve was: “How do I get holes / overhangs in my world?”
Since 2D perlin noise generates nice/smooth looking hills, 3d perlin noise will generate nice/smooth hills and nice holes in your 3D voxel grid.
An implementation can be found here (while that is an N-dimensional solution).
In other use-cases the Z component of a 3D perlin noise is set to the current time. This way you will get a smooth transition between different 2d perlin noises and that can be used as groundwork for fluid textures.