In this paper we give a method for generating surface appearances with a maximum number of 15 supervising parameters. Surfaces are made up of fast spatial changes (high spatial frequencies) and slow spatial changes (low spatial frequencies). The generator is a mixture of several techniques generally used in image synthesis, image animation, in CAD and in signal processing.A model for generating fish scales is actually under development. The flexibility of the method makes it suitable for many other applications, such as 3D regular patterns, tissue-like texture, etc.