Depth-Based Selective Antialiasing

Abstract

Antialiasing is still a challenge in real-time computer graphics. In this paper, we present a real-time selective antialiasing solution that builds upon our experience. We investigated existing approaches to real-time antialiasing and finally found a new simpler solution. Our new idea is to use the Z-buffer directly for extracting visible-edge information. The solution presented here can be summarized as follows: 1) select object edges by applying a Laplacian spatial convolution to the Z-buffer; 2) filter out aliasing artifacts by applying low-pass spatial convolution filtering to the selected pixels. In this approach, the same circuit architecture can be used for the selection and antialiasing of selected pixels. The major advantage of using spatial convolution in the context of antialiasing is that general purpose hardware real-time convolution filters are well known and available. The method presented here can be used to improve image quality in graphics accelerators but also applications such as real-...