April, 2011

Aliasing can occur any time you resample a texture , for instance to scale it, rotate it, or map it onto a 3D model. Thanks to our friend the Nyquist threshold , the resulting problems get worse the lower a frequency you sample at, ie. the smaller you...

Multisampling is a compromise for people who really want to use supersampling , but can't afford it. The idea is simple: instead of increasing the resolution for all rendering, what if we do triangle rasterization and depth/stencil tests at the higher...

Supersampling is the simple, brute force approach to antialiasing computer graphics. In order to avoid aliasing , the Nyquist theorem says we must take at least twice as many samples as the highest frequency detail in our input signal. So how about we...

My previous post described how resampling a signal can cause aliasing problems. The worst problems occur when dramatically reducing the number of samples used to represent a signal, or when the source includes lots of high frequency detail. Specifically...

The math behind digital sampling and filtering is fascinating, complex, and full of arcane terms like Nyquist frequency . But I'm barely a good enough mathematician to understand it, let alone try to explain it here! This post is my attempt to describe...

I've been meaning to write about antialiasing for a while, but now I sit down to do that I realize I have too much to say for a single article. So this post is the introduction to a series. Antialiasing is one of the most important yet least widely understood...

"Source code" "Bedroom coder" "Can someone explain why this code isn't working?" "He's such a natural, he thinks directly in code" These are dirty, dirty phrases... code (kohd) noun A system used for brevity or...

There is a somewhat convincing argument that software design patterns are really just an attempt to emulate missing language features . Eric Lippert recently wrote a series of articles exploring how one might attempt to implement the "virtual method...

I'm sure you've all watched someone who doesn't know keyboard shortcuts struggling to edit a document. It can be frustrating how long even simple things take, and hard not to start shouting advice: ctrl+shift+right, ctrl+x, end, ctrl+v! But I occasionally...

Google's April Fool joke got me reading about why graphic designers hate Comic Sans so much. I can't help being reminded of one of my old college lecturers, a music theory analyst who once told a class I was in that " this composition was very successful...