Show HN: Perlin Noise Terminal Animation in Rust (60 FPS, Truecolor)

Source: Hacker News

perlin-terminal

Beautiful Perlin noise animation for your terminal. Smooth, flowing gradients rendered in 24‑bit truecolor using half‑block characters for double vertical resolution.

Features

• Truecolor rendering — Full 24‑bit RGB color gradients
• Double vertical resolution — Uses ▀ half‑block characters to render 2 pixels per cell
• Multiple color themes — Ocean, Fire, Aurora, Matrix
• Smooth animation — Multi‑octave Perlin noise for organic, flowing motion
• 60 FPS — Optimized for smooth rendering
• Responsive — Handles terminal resize gracefully
• Clean exit — Ctrl+C / Q / Esc restores terminal state

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/denisepattenson/perlin-terminal

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/denisepattenson/perlin-terminal
cd perlin-terminal
cargo build --release
./target/release/perlin-terminal

Usage

# Default ocean theme
perlin-terminal

# Fire theme
perlin-terminal --theme fire

# Aurora borealis
perlin-terminal --theme aurora

# Matrix‑style green
perlin-terminal --theme matrix

# Customize noise and speed
perlin-terminal --theme fire --scale 0.04 --speed 0.8

Options

Controls

• Q or Esc — Quit
• Ctrl +C — Quit

Themes

🌊 Ocean

Deep navy → royal blue → teal → cyan. Calm and mesmerizing.

🔥 Fire

Black → deep red → orange → yellow → white. Like staring into embers.

🌌 Aurora

Purple → teal → green → pink. Northern lights in your terminal.

💚 Matrix

Black → dark green → bright green. You know the one.

Requirements

• A terminal with 24‑bit truecolor support (most modern terminals)
• Rust 1.70+

License

MIT