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Antialiasing

Rasterized antialiased line segments produce fragments whose fragment squares intersect a rectangle centered on the line segment. Two of the edges are parallel to the specified line segment; each is at a distance of one-half the current width from that segment: one above the segment and one below it. The other two edges pass through the line endpoints and are perpendicular to the direction of the specified line segment. Coverage values are computed for each fragment by computing the area of the intersection of the rectangle with the fragment square (see Figure 3.6; see also section 3.2).

  
Figure 3.6: The region used in rasterizing and finding corresponding coverage values for an antialiased line segment (an x-major line segment is shown).

Equation 3.2 is used to compute associated data values just as with non-antialiased lines; equation 3.1 is used to find the value of t for each fragment whose square is intersected by the line segment's rectangle. Not all widths need be supported for line segment antialiasing, but width antialiased segments must be provided. As with the point width, a GL implementation may be queried for the range and number of gradations of available antialiased line widths.

For purposes of antialiasing, a stippled line is considered to be a sequence of contiguous rectangles centered on the line segment. Each rectangle has width equal to the current line width and length equal to 1 pixel (except the last, which may be shorter). These rectangles are numbered from 0 to n, starting with the rectangle incident on the starting endpoint of the segment. Each of these rectangles is either eliminated or produced according to the procedure given under Line Stipple, above, where ``fragment'' is replaced with ``rectangle.'' Each rectangle so produced is rasterized as if it were an antialiased polygon, described below (but culling, non-default settings of PolygonMode , and polygon stippling are not applied).



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Next: 3.4.3 Line Rasterization State Up: 3.4.2 Other Line Segment Previous: Wide Lines



David Blythe
Sat Mar 29 02:23:21 PST 1997