Pokefan531's Posts

[MMD] Anti Aliasing Showcase 2

This is my second comparison of the Anti-Aliasing methods that I’ve tested. I used mipmaps on all test and have more to show the difference outside of supersampling.
All are using High Quality Texture Filtering and Ainstropic Filtering at 16x on all drivers.
Previous comparison: https://pokefan531.tumblr.com/post/171769349563/mmd-anti-aliasing-showcase-this-is-a-montage

Internal methods:
No AA gives us raw aliased image on geometry just like games without any AA.
MMD’s Internal AA setting uses driver’s MSAA at 8x without alpha coverage, as seen on the leaves below, shadows, and shading on models. It does show a little difference between Nvidia and AMD. On Nvidia, even if I try to change the LOD setting, it doesn’t change for MSAA so some textures are a bit blurry on the models on lower resolution, despite using high quality filtering with 16x AF. Higher resolution may lessen the LOD blur. However, the anti-aliasing method uses Sparse Grid to do better on some lines, but hard to see the difference in this one when comparing with Rotated Grid that AMD uses. AMD’s however, have more clear mipmapping and the Rotated Grid method looks similar.

Shader methods:
FXAA and SMAA shaders are from RayMMD’s extensions from github, and are used without AA on to demonstrate. FXAA and SMAA doesn’t help on disconnected lines and shimmering in motion is visible still. SMAA ia a bit sharper, but neither can clean the aliasing at the models. At the log on the bottom right, FXAA has a small advantage to do that slope better. SMAA, like the last comparison, has the line glitch as seen on the leaves. It is a bug only to that shader port to MMD.
SSAA_4x.fx is less compatible with MMD, and if using some post processing effects like SSAO, it can either have a little blur on edges, or aliased blur as seen here. That shader is not well compatible with it, and you can see it can look a bit worse than no AA.

Downsampling Methods:
Like the Downsampling post and previous comparison, it does have up to 16x downsampling quality and comparing each. SSAA_4x shader looks identical to 4x if the shader is compatible with it, but it is comparable. 4x does a good job at trying to do anti-aliasing, but if you look at the small lines at the leafs, it is not completely smooth, and temporal aliasing is still shown, but less frequent. 9x helps more and 16x cleans the rest of small aliasing and looks better in motion where you don’t see a lot of shimmering or temporal aliasing. This is the best way to use with RAYMMD however, since this is the only method to do downsampling at the monent. This is a manual downsampling, meaning you would have to downsample from Photoshop or Virtualdub as this post was explained:
https://pokefan531.tumblr.com/post/171739184928/mmd-downscaling-anti-aliasing-with-ray-mmd

MSAA from two vendors:
Similar to MMD’s AA. This method uses alpha coverage which does affect the leaves this time. It is more smooth. However, MSAA will never take care of shadows, self shadows, or shading. I decide to show Nvidia and AMD on this one again, and you can compare the quality. The LOD situation from MMD’s AA is also said here on lower resolutions. AMD’s seems to be sharper on textures and both barely showed texture aliasing due to mipmapping, regardless of shaders. For AA quality, AMD uses Rotated Grid method and Nvidia uses Sparse Grid method. AA quality description are pretty much the same as below, but using MSAA on this one.

Supersampling methods:
We’re comparing Nvidia’s SGSSAA with AMD’s RGSSAA. Nvidia’s LOD can be change here, so it can compare with AMD’s LOD. At 2x, you can see some differences and aliasing is taken on one direction. Sparse Grid does take care of the small lines a bit more, but you generally won’t be using 2x supersampling. 4x, Sparse grid takes care of small lines slightly more than Rotated grid. They are a bit harder to tell the difference in this scene. Both of them at 4x looks a lot better than 4x downsampling. 8x, the difference are pretty minor. At the log at the bottom right, the slope is a bit smoother in Sparse grid and at Miku’s hair, AA patterns are a bit less than Rotated grid. Honestly, this scene is pretty hard to see some difference from 4x, but not sure about in motion yet. With 8x paired with 4x downsampling for fun, the difference is indisguinishable.
https://pokefan531.tumblr.com/post/171569153043/mmd-tutorial-sgssaa-with-nvidia-inspector-edit

Conclusion: 8x Supersampling is recommended for general use and there isn’t really much a difference between SGSSAA and RGSSAA on this still image. This scene doesn’t use RAYMMD, so it is safe to use 8x AA with any shaders. 4x is pretty good to and you can use it if your system can’t handle it or rendering a 4k video with vram lower than 3gb if using several shaders and effects. However, I prefer sticking with 8x on any situation since I usually make videos and images at 1080p and 720p. I can still use 8x for 4k images. Next one will be a video to test between SGSSAA and RGSSAA to see how it looks in motion. I know SGSSAA does get rid of a lot of shimmering and temporal aliasing to where it barely shows at 4x and pretty much none at 8x, and I do want to see how it’s like for Rotated Grid method.