In article <400409cc$1@news.povray.org>, "Slime" <fak### [at] emailaddress> 
wrote:

> Because they're too small to be accurately represented in the final image
> resolution. Just because they're intense doesn't mean they should become a
> full pixel in size.

That is exactly what it means.


> This could end up producing different results depending
> on what the final resolution is.

Correct. For instance, a star, which is essentially a point light, will 
be a bright point...not a ball or empty space.


> Antialiasing supersamples the scene, but it must take into account that the
> final output will have limitations such as a finite dynamic range. The
> mysterious "format" you refer to is the same as the actual format of the
> final image, which is important. By clipping before averaging, anti-aliasing
> produces the effect of rendering at an infinite resolution and then resizing
> smaller, which is exactly what it's supposed to do.

No it is not. The purpose of antialiasing is to prevent aliasing 
artifacts by supersampling the scene, *not* to emulate reduction from a 
larger sized image.


> I admit that I do see some logic in your argument - clipping before
> averaging does feel artificial to some extent.

Because it *is* artificial.


> However, the fact that
> clipping after averaging would produce jagged edges on bright objects causes
> me to believe that it would be much more useless than clipping before
> averaging.

Which wipes out small details which *should* be visible.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: <chr### [at] tagpovrayorg>
http://tag.povray.org/

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