Antialiasing (CineRender)

This settings is available in the Detailed view of PhotoRendering Settings for the CineRender engine.
From left to right: None, Geometry (the slightly blurred texture is a result of the antialiasing filters) and Best antialiasing.
None: The image to be output will be calculated without antialiasing (any existing Render controls with differing settings will be ignored). Step-like structures will be recognizable at object and color edges. This mode is particularly suited for fast test renderings for which quality is not important.
Geometry: This is the default setting which smooths all object edges (automatically with 16x16 sub-pixels).
Best: This enables (in addition to object smoothing) adaptive antialiasing (additional sub-pixels will only be calculated at critical regions, i.e. for pixels whose color differs greatly from those of its neighboring pixels), which affects color edges (e.g. also shadows, objects behind transparencies, etc.). This in turn is controlled via several parameters available for this mode.
These settings control CineRender’s adaptive antialiasing (set Best mode, above). Sub-pixels will be calculated for neighboring pixels whose color differs too greatly; for non-critical regions (large, uniformly colored regions) no sub-pixels will be calculated if at all possible.
Min Level defines the minimum number of sub-pixels that will always be rendered. The default value of 1.1 will suffice for most cases. If, however, artifacting should occur in very detailed regions, e.g. shadow elements get swallowed, higher values should be used.
Max Level is the sub-pixel dispersion that is applied to critical regions (mostly high-contrast regions, i.e. color edges or object edges behind transparencies). This value can, for example, be increased when rendering glass to ensure the rendering of finer details.
The Threshold value defines the degree of color divergence at which Max Level should be applied for a given pixel. Small values will allow no divergence, large values will allow greater contrasts before smoothing begins.
Filter Width/Filter Height: Filter Width/Height defines how many sub-pixels (calculated from the center of the pixel outwards) will be taken into consideration when the pixel color value is calculated.
As long as the Custom Size option is enabled, an ideal value for Filter Width and Filter Height will be used, which will also be displayed. The values are in relation to the pixel, i.e. a value of 0.5 for both parameters means that sub-pixels 0.5 to the left and right, and 0.5 above and below the pixel center point will be taken into consideration, i.e. all sub-pixels on the pixel surface. Higher values will extend to surrounding pixels accordingly, which will result in color edges being rendered correspondingly less sharply.
Clip Negative Component: A filter function’s negative regions can be clipped.
See Sampling Methods in Surface Settings.