Subject: Re: LW:TNG
From: [email-masked] (Jeff Walkup)
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 00:03:39 -0700 (PDT)

The discussion, thus far, goes: 

JLFITZ@cais:
>        A friend suggested that it would be cool if lightwave had an
>"anti-aliasing" envelope.

Allen H.:
> I'm not sure I understand the point of this.

JLFITZ@cais:
> 	I guess the point would be that in some cases being able to have 
> the AA function go on auto pilot could save time.

It pretty much _is_ on autopilot now.  Giving it an envelope would
allow more user control.  You can already control the AA with the
Adaptive Sampling, and the Low, Medium, etc. settings.  But maybe
more control would save some rendering time.

Perhaps you have a scene with a detailed object that starts out
far from the camera and then moves in closer.  You'd have to set
AA up high to get those first few frames to look good - but at
the same time waste it on the later frames.  This is assuming we
don't want to stop rendering at frame XX and change the settings.

I've just found that LW needs it's AA cranked (Medium, no Adaptive)
when there are finely detailed objects in the scene - especially
when they are distant.  It seems like I pay a penalty for this,
the extra, uneeded AA'ing on the rest of the scene.  It would be
nice to lower the AA for frames that don't need so much.

Am I crazy?  Should I just buy a Raptor and shut the hell up? ;)
One nice thing about LW is that it has always been fast, even
on the slowest of CPUs.

-- 
Jeff Walkup . [email-masked] . San Francisco . 415.668.7312