Anti-Aliasing MSG 3

 

This example shows off how to get rid of 'color-fringing' that is actually caused by feeding anti-aliased graphics into a color palette mapping processor.  This may seem counter-intuitive at first, turning off anti-aliased drawing to get a better quality output.  The problem is that the smooth thin color gradation associated with an anti-aliased shape edge will color map to a unique coloring if you are using a ForceColorMap processor (this causes the thin color fringing artifacts), so you don't want that anti-aliased color gradient to be there before you do the color mapping.

Most of the MSG processors have a Quality option that lets you adjust whether anti-aliased drawing is taking place or not (if the MSG effect incorporates vector drawing internally).  By using the lower quality vector drawing (no anti-aliasing) you actually get a better quality output.

If i mute the ForceColorMap processor, you can see what the MSG output looks like without that processor.  I also turned the anti-aliasing drawing back on for this non color mapped image below.

You will notice that this version of the effect is not particularly interesting (at least to me).  The ForceColorMap step is an essential part of the overall Art Strategy i'm pursuing here with this MSG preset.  The strategy involves dropping a few bezier shapes into each of the 3 RGB color fields.  This is why the non-color mapped image looks the way it does.  This forms a set of inter-related flat colored regions.  After the individual shapes are defined in the RGB color planes, then they are colorized by the ForceColorMap processor.  Using anti-aliased drawing for the non-color mapped image makes it look better, but makes the color mapped image look worse.  You need to take into account the complete art strategy when deciding how to fine tune the parameters for the best overall effect.