Better anti-aliasing?

[Dennis Miller]

This image was generated from an MSG preset at 1920 x 1080. The jagged edges on the form are pretty bad. Is there any way to improve the anti-aliasing when creating images from Evolver? I can upload the original preset if needed, but I don't know what the options are, if any. Thanks much. Dennis

Amorphisms10810.zip

Amorphisms10810.zip

Amorphisms10810.zip

[Synthetik]

If you want to upload a preset, you need to archive compress it to a .zip file. You control click the file icon in the mac osx finder and select the make an archive file option. mac files (unlike windows files) often have a data and resource fork component, and if you email them uncompressed you are usually just emailing the data fork.

depending on what you are going in a msg preset you can generate all kinds of artifacts. palette mapping for example can generate color shifts at edges because the transition values at the edge would potentially map to another color. some processors also have settings that will generate very hard transitions.

i'm not sure what you can do to clean that up other than run it at a higher res and then downscale the frames in studio artist as a second pass. you could do that with a PASeq that just set the canvas to the source, and you would have a canvas size smaller than the source.

[Dennis Miller]

Thanks John. This was rendered at 1920 x 1080 (many thousands of frames, in fact), so I don't know if I want to upsample, rerun, then resize... guess I could see if there were a difference.
I guess my question is, in theory, are there any settings to adjust anti-aliasing on frames generated by Evolver... I don't see anything of that kind but want to be sure I am not missing anything. I used QT Movie as output, did some dissolves and cuts on a couple of Movies, then output (from Premiere) as inidividual Targa files. Curious whether outputting as individual numbered Tarag files from the get-go would make any different, or if that wouldn't change things.
But in general, are frames anti-aliased at any point as they are output from Evolver?
Thanks again.
Dennis

[Synthetik]

What you see is what you get right now. Associated with an individual msg processor might be a setting that could improve an overall final image but there's nothing global right now that says 'render at higher quality'.

I've thought of adding an option for animation output that would render into a higher res frame buffer internally and then anti-alias it down for output so that you could do your rendering internally at a higher res and have all the details hidden from you.

The other thing on the to do list is that the way the whole thing is written we have the capability to take advantage of much higher bit resolution internally so we could offer that as an option as well at some point in the future.

You could always try to build in something in the overall processor chain at the end to smooth things up. Or you could run a second pass in studio artist using something like Smart Blur Ip Op to clean it up. With the right settings that particular Ip Op can do a very good job at cleaning things up.

For some kinds of imagery, it might be expedient to actually render at a lower pixel resolution in msg evolver and then use a second pass in studio artist with supersizer to do the interpolation to the final film resolution. If you are using msg processors that generate really hard edges and you don't want that in the final film result this could be a way to achieve that and also get away with faster render times in msg evolver. whether that will work or not depends on what you are specifically doing and how you like the look of the supersized output. i use this trick a lot in 2D artwork, where i will purposely make my original piece hard edged knowing i'm going to supersize it which will provide some softening of the original hard edges in the resized higher res output. i often work with Smart Blur and a Morphol enhance Ip Op on either side of the supersize step to clean things a little before the interpolation and then boost the supersized result a little.

[Synthetik]

here's the settings i use for Smart Blur for hard edge cleanup.

smartBlur1.jpg

[Dennis Miller]

Thanks John. I'll looking into Ip'ing an entire movie (it is 112 GB, though, so that could be a time sink??).

The problem here is that I am creating some HD animation on commission and I can't actually view an uncompressed continuous stream of HD animation on any of machines (can any machines do that?) So first I do my sketches to build the composition, then I render it all out small frame size to be sure there are no seams or glitches, then rerender the full frame 1920 x 1080 QT Movie. At that point, I can see individual frames at actual size on my monitor, such as what I uploaded above, but I can't really tell where there might be problems when I deliver the goods (and that's not a good position to be in).

So in my animation software (CInema 4D), I would follow the same process right down to the final render stage, where I would flip all the switches for absolute best AA (whatever that scale happens to be), and I know I will be in pretty good shape.

It's just a little awkward to experiment with IP or Supersiezer and other options when I can't always tell if the results are what I want. So I definitely love the idea of built-in AA, even if it requires a separate render pass. That would be a big enhancement for the type of animations I (and perhaps others?) are doing.

Best,
D.

[Dennis Miller]

Here are two of the presets I used to create the file I uploaded earlier. If you happen to see anything in the Chain that would smooth the curves, could you let me know?
Thanks much.
Dnenis

animated msg preset1c.zip

animated msg preset2.zip

[Synthetik]

I haven't done much HD work myself, but i just tried an experiment where i rendered out a short HD animation using uncompressed animation codec and i'm able to play the uncompressed HD movie file back in the quicktime player on my machine (intel pro tower).

I think a good strategy in general is to run some tests with really short clips at your final res whenever trying out something new before committing to long renders. That way you can try out different processing options and see how they work. While in general msg processors will generate resolution independent imagery, that's not always the case, so you would always want to see what it looks like at a final render size.

[Dennis Miller]

Thanks John. Thatr's pretty much how I work - smaller, uncompressed run through then when all is set compositionally, a final render at full strength/size, always using uncompressed (8-bit). I can easily play a 720 x 480 on my iMac, but haven't got a machine in the house (including all the dual processor Windows boxes) that will play 1920 x 1080 at 25 (much less 30) fps.
But I think the real issue here is that some type of internal anti-aliasing would be a big enhancement for this type of work. Hope that will happen down the line. Not sure if you had a chance to peek at the attached presets, but you do and see something that would help, let me know.
Thanks again.
D.