Anti-aliasing?

Anti-aliasing is a technique/filter used to essentially smooth out the andquot;jaggiesandquot; you might see in any crisp lines/edges. I apologize if the following explanation is obvious to you, but it might help those who haven’t run into this topic before.

Aliasing is an andquot;artifactandquot; of the conversion process between taking a [slanted] straight line between two points in space and having to represent them on a grid (ie. screen/pixels). Looking closely you’ll see stair-stepping in the representation of a slanted line. This will be especially visible when you have a white line drawn on a black background.

Anti-aliasing is a technique used that identifies the areas where this stair-stepping is occuring and andquot;interpolatingandquot; the grid cells/pixels’ intensity around the line. For example, assume a slanted line is somewhere between two adjacent pixels (vertically), and that in actuality (mathematically) it should intercept the Y-axis at 32.7, a decision must be made about which co-ordinate (at Y=32 or Y=33) should display the white pixel.

Without anti-aliasing, the software would have probably put the white pixel at Y=33 (rounded up) and a black pixel (background) at Y=32. With anti-aliasing enabled, the software will place a 70% (for example) intensity white on pixel Y=33 and a 30% intensity white on pixel Y=32, and blend with the background colour.

So, in summary, you definitely don’t need anti-aliasing enabled when you are working with your models, until you are actually generating the extremely clean final render.

Hope that helps a bit.
Cal.

In a previuos post, I asked about anti-aliasing in rendering with the POV feature of 3DC. Can someone try to explain to me what anti-aliasing does for a picture when its rendered as compared to not using anti-aliasing? What does anti-aliasing actually do in the render? I know it will really slow things down, but I’m trying to learn how to make what everyone calls andquot; photorealisticandquot; images, or what some call andquot; GI andquot;. In other programs, you could use monty carlo settings, along with soft light features to get some very good, realistic images. 3DC along with POV have so much more parameters to work with, ( and I’ve seen some fantastic renders… ie, Kirks renders) that I really want to try to understand how to do a better job of rendering my models…… Can anyone help me????

ok..thanks..that was easy enough…… I wasnt sure and thought it would have some affect on the realism of the render…. Now… back to trying to get a good quality realistic render…..I’ll have more questions….thanks again man!!!!

hI bLAYDRNNNR

ALL ANTI-ALIASING IS FOR CLEANING UP YOUR PIC
( IN EASY TERMS )
YOU DONT NEED IT ON IF YOUR DOING A ROUGH DRAFT
USE IT ON A FINAL PIC