Real-time 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 edges information. The solution presented here can be summarized as follows: 1) select objects edges by applying on the z-buffer spatial convolution with Laplacian; 2) filter out aliasing artifacts by applying lowpass spatial convolution filtering to selected pixels. In this approach the same circuit architecture can be used for selection and the antialiasing of selected pixels. The major advantage of using spatial convolution in the context of antialiasing is hat general purpose hardware real-time convolution filters are well known and available. Method presented here can be used to improve image quality in graphics accelerators but also applications such as real-time ray tracing.