It just occurred to me how nice it would be to have the ability for
antialiasing to start at a level above pixel-level. That is, at a
superpixel level.

Instead of taking a sample for each pixel as a basis, you could set it
to start taking samples for each 2x2 pixels. Or 4x4 or 8x8 etc. You
could have it stop at pixel level, or go further down in subpixel
levels, like in regular antialiasing.

Antialiasing with superpixels would be ideal for test renders. Now, a
800x600 image going from 4x4 level down to pixel level would take
exactly equally long to render as a 200x150 image going from pixel level
to level 2 regular antialising. However, the details are far more
visible in the big image than in the small one.

The reason: While an antialiased image have more information than an
image without antialiasing, there is still some information lost because
the samples are averaged together. Using superpixels however, no
information is lost at all (when it stops at pixel level). This gives
maximum value for your rendering time.

Of course details would get lost that are smaller than the superpixels,
but that's no different than details getting lost in regularly
antialiased images where the details are smaller than the pixels.

The point is that superpixel antialiasing would enable you to very
quickly render images where details would be clearly visible, while
areas of the image with less details would render very fast.

How would the superpixels look? Well, they could simply be squares of
pixels of equal color, but it would be an extra plus if there was an
option to interpolate them, using the same interpolation methods that
can be used with image_map interpolation. Then you might even in some
cases be able to use superpixel rendering for final renders.

What do you think?

Rune
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