Handmade Anti-Aliasing
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6737
Printed Date: 03 November 2025 at 8:26pm
Topic: Handmade Anti-Aliasing
Posted By: Danilux
Subject: Handmade Anti-Aliasing
Date Posted: 07 July 2008 at 1:39am
Hi, i'm learning how to make pixel art as well as 16 and 32 px icons, and antialiasing is important at this sizes, i have been investigating but i haven been able to find a tutorial or a guide to messure or calculate how to make the antialiasing, i mean for example how many grays should i paint when doing a black circle on a white background, how many many different grays should i use, how do i know where to place them, For example like in the picture below, there is not a standard placement if you will.  If you know of a tutorial that would be great, sorry if i that didn't make much sense my english is not very good. Thanks in advanced guys. |
Replies:
Posted By: Larwick
Date Posted: 07 July 2008 at 8:11am
Hey Danilux!  I just thought i'd quickly AA that line a few times to show you some ways in which i or perhaps most people would AA the line manually. I used a different amount of colours so you can see how that effects the smoothness of the line - although as you may notice too many colours can make it furry, so you've gotta be careful. Also you can see that there are many ways to manually anti-alias even a single line, your choice of which would depend on the situation of course. The number i've put next to the lines shows how many colours are used in the line, but doesnt' include the white background in the count. The general rules/tips i use are: ~ Lengthen the area of AA colour/line when the line's angle/curve is very shallow/subtle. ~ Use as few colours as possible so you don't overwhelm or confuse yourself. However, watch out for the jaggedyness you may face if you limit yourself too far. ~ Don't just add or remove colours to your palette when you build up the amount of AA colours, you have to make sure the colours that are there already work well with the rest. (Eg. if a 3 colour 100%, 50% and 0% black palette was used, but then you added a 25% to smooth it out, it may be better if you changed the 50% to a 66% and added a 33%! This is just an example however, you should use the colours that LOOK good to you [on a properly calibrated screen], rather than ones that seem to work in numbers and figures.) ~ Don't worry about changing your lineart a little when you AA, of course it all depends on the final result! Hope that helps. -------------  http://larw-ck.deviantart.com">
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Posted By: Metaru
Date Posted: 07 July 2008 at 9:24am
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and remember that not all lines have to be antialiased. for example, 45° lines doesnt require AA at al. ------------- I ate leel's babies |
Posted By: Larwick
Date Posted: 07 July 2008 at 9:46am
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Unless of course you AA your line giving the impression that it's thicker than usual (eg. 7 colour example above), in which case you'll have to AA the 45° to give it thickness. Sometimes a 45° line can also look too clean against some AA'd lines. But yeah generally there's no need to. ------------- http://larw-ck.deviantart.com">
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Posted By: Danilux
Date Posted: 08 July 2008 at 10:00pm
| Thanks for all the help Larwick, that was awesome. |