AA on Mandelbulb 3d

[LAV]

Hi all! A simple question. How can I  have an anti alias filter on the MB3D rendering? (and, can I, at all...?)

I see that "3D Mandelbulb ray tracer" can filter the image with some sort of AA engine, but I don't find any reference to AA in Mb3d.
Many thanks for your help

[Don Whitaker]

To get an anti-aliased image in M3D you'll need to render at larger sizes then reduce. There are button one the main palette that control the size of the image (number of pixels). to the right of those are three Scale buttons 1:1, 1:2, 1:3. Pressing those will re-size the image and smooth out the jaggies.

So for for a 1280x720 image you could render at 2560x1440 then press the 1:2 button.  I may be wrong but I think that M3D does some spiffy math to smooth the image, rather than just a standard image resizing.  You could also render very large then resize in Photoshop or other app.

Some of the Calculate window parameters can effect the apparent smoothness as well. If Smooth Normals is set to 0 then the image can sometimes look extra jaggie.

[LAV]

I'll try even if it's a tricky way to AA! Many thanks.

Just to be sure: What does it mean the 'sharp=N' in the main view?

[Don Whitaker]

That runs a sharpen filter on the image if you downscale it.

btw - In case you missed em, there are hover tips on many of the buttons and boxes in M3D. Just hold mouse over them and wait for a couple seconds for more info.  took me a while to realize that when I started.

[LAV]

Yes, I noticed.
Anyway I see an AA in the animation section. But it seems to actually work as an image resizing. as above. Doesn't it?

[Don Whitaker]

yeah, but it sort of works the other way around. Setting the animation render size to 1280x720 then selecting 2 on the anti alias will render each frame at 2560x1440,  resize to 1280x720, then save.

[LAV]

It would be wonderful if MB3D could manage an AA algorithm as 3d software does (Gaussian, Mitchel, Lanczos and so on).
Many thanks