gap filling exercise

Submitted By: Lazur Date: August 16, 2015, 06:25:44 PM Views: 4402
Summary: Some anti-aliasing issues and a way to avoid them.
If you are aware of the basic difference between raster and vector formats, you should know that 2D vector images are rendered to screen pixels. 
vector vs. raster format


And with rendering, comes the abyss of anti-aliasing.
As long as we can distinguish one screen pixel from another, the result of it will be noticeable.
spatial anti-aliasing

On the other hand, it won't really hurt if you see some artifacts on screen, if you want the result to be printed at a large resolution.
But what if you want to avoid the most common issues? Let's see.


Demonstrating the problem:
two objects, sharing the same side


when objects are next to each other, a thin "gap" appears, where the background shows through






when objects are on top of each other, the shared edge can become "jagged"





The affected part is only a few pixels wide, nonetheless:






 


A theoretic model to elaborate the issue can be drawn if the objects are all blurred a bit:










Pixels are averaged in the rendering process. By duplicating the objects, you can "force more strength" to them, but that won't ever produce an accurate result.
For example, if you duplicate an object hundred times, leaving all the duplicants at the exact same position, it will look aliased compared to a single one alone.


So, what else to try then?
Fill up the gap. Avoid drawing objects sharing the same edges.

Think of the objects as pieces of a papercraft model.
In that vein, anti-aliasing has a similar effect as misplacing the objects by accident.




You need some extra space to "add the glue".

Whether it's one object overlapping the other partially, or a third object drawn for that purpose, it all depends on you.


To see some solutions in the action, stay tuned, the next tutorials will show good examples for the use.
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