Antialiasing and Blending

Aliasing is a signal-processing term describing sampling errors that occur when a continuous function containing sharp changes in intensity is approximated using discrete intensity values. Antialiasing is a method for minimizing these errors by using gradations in intensity of neighboring pixels at edges of primitives, rather than setting pixels to maximum or zero intensity only. There are many references on antialiasing as it applies to graphics. This chapter will discuss the method of antialiasing used by the Reality Co-Processor (RCP). In addition, we will discuss other uses of the blender hardware. The blender plays a key role in antialiasing, z-buffering, and transparency effects. After understanding the blender hardware, it may be possible for a user to come up with new effects by clever programming of the blender pipeline.

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