Whilst experimenting more with Houdini and its displacement capabilities, I delved deeper into noise and vector pattern generation, specifically domain distortion.

When generating a pattern procedurally, you have to define the coordinates used to draw it. The default wisdom is to use the same linear coordinates to generate the pattern as you would to display it, however it’s also possible to declare your own custom values in their place. A way of breaking up and distorting procedural noise such that the results aren’t so uniform and recognizably synthetic is to use a modified version of the screen coordinates — you can use noise to distort your noise.

Domain distortion/warping can be applied to a range of uses of mathmatical patterns and generative effects, from 1D waveforms through to 2D and 3D noise patterns.