So, I’m using OSA 16 There are distinct levels of shading- It almost is what I want, but the renders are not smooth enough.
See examples>>>
I know that it doesn’t look like a big deal, but it’s much more noticable in the animation.
Below are the settings I used. I’d really appreciate any suggestions on how I can make the renders smoother.
Hi,
Increase dithering.
Are you talking about the lines between shades of color, or the actual antialiasing itself? That number next to ‘Gauss’ (1.5), change that to 0.5 for SUPER smooth edges. I usually just leave mine at 1 or sometimes as low as 0.8 (but never lower).
You’re not showing us the most important part of your setup. What is your output? Are you rendering to an MOV or an AVI? It could be codec banding you are experiencing. Try rendering to a still PNG image and see if the banding occurs.
Rawpigeon - Great suggestion… How do I do that? Or were is the dithering control?
LazyCoder - I played with the Gauss value. No real changes. I’m talking about how there are distinct borders with in the gradual blends.
I should had mentioned, I did renders in most of the formats- videos, jpeg, png, targ, etc.
The results were the same or not satisfactory.
I found Dithering. Thank you.
Activate ‘Full OSA’ for your materials? 
Thanks yellow, already had OSA at 16. It was the dithering settings. This is the new and improved.
Much better! I really appreciate everyone who posted, especially rawpigeon who had the solution! Thanks
By setting OSA@16 you activated OSA for whole render pipeline but not for material so it’s not taken under consideration while render:
Also you can try FSA instead of OSA but it’s a bit slower.
BTW I used to think about dithering as a lower quality, grainy solution but if you are satisfied …
So, In addition to the OSA buttons on the render panel, what additional setting do you recommend? Dithering was perfect for this quick video, but I’m sure that In future animations I will want to know how to full activate OSA.
IIRC if you have OSA and motion blur the effects are multiplicative so an OSA of 5 and a motion Blur of 5 = OSA 25 on a nonmoving image
jawra- oops, The picture didn’t load the first time. I see it now. thanks.
Like I wrote, sometimes FSA gives better result but it depends on scene setup : lights, colors, shadows etc. FSA is done after rendering whole image not while rendering like OSA does and has additional features -> read manual. You can play with AA filters to sharpen or blur image:
You can turn of OSA/FSA and compute AA in node editor by bluring image - e.g.: use toon-edge render on different render layer to use it as blur mask for objects borders only.
Indeed, dithering can hide some imperfections in animation but its up to you and your goal.
Hi,
FSA is excellent and highly recommended if you don’t mind the hit on render time, but I doubt it would help in this instance. The problem in the images in the first post is just caused by the fact that we can see the discontinuities in an 8-bit gradient. Although dithering is not ideal (it makes image compression more difficult and introduces some visual noise), it helps to break up these discontinuities and give the illusion of a colour depth greater than 8-bits.
I really didn’t know anything about either: dithering or FSA. Thanks so much for the input everyone!