How to animate random turbulence on a mesh surface? I'm trying to create a 3d object that behaves similarly to what you see in the background of this website ( not interactively, and only on one mesh ).
The idea is to take a sphere, maybe cut away a few parts so it looks like a piece of broken egg-shell, - or even just a flat plane, and then perturb the vertices randomly over time.

I started looking at a displacement modifier with some noise/cloud textures, but found that it would only distort the verts directly along their normals. Also, noise/cloud textures appear to be kind of hard to animate. I've started looking at forces and physics, maybe a cloth simulation? But here's where my Blender-specific experience falls short.

I've done a fair amount of work like this in max and maya, so I can probably find my way if pointed in the right direction. I'm just fairly new to blender.

Note: I did find this very promising answer, but I'm thinking this will still only move the verts directly along their normals.

Thanks!

PS I only plan to render the wireframe, so texturing isn't likely an important factor.
You can achieve this effect in many different ways. It will involve:
1) Particles / points that is wiggling around
2) Some kind of edge creations when points are closer together (KDtree).
3) Shaders to make it nice
4) Instancing

But I think the easiest and more elegant is using something like Animation Nodes Add-On or Sverchok.



Search: Plexus effect, Blender, kd-tree.

You might even found plug in that does this already.

Actually Animation Nodes has a template that does this kind of noise "plexus" effect or random points and network connection already. All you need to do is just make it pretty by adjusting the shader, transparency, etc.

And Sverchok has one node that generate KDTree edges... 

Enjoy!