Anti Aliasing in Post - A technical work of art

Hey all!

I was wondering what to post that was not in my model collection and I remembered this gem! Yes, I call a lot of things gems, LOL.

Around 2016 I finished Esther 6, KJV. It was an incredible experience in every aspect of film making! It also gave me material to work with.

Let me take you back a bit further. Blender Render is a very old render engine. A mix between a raytracer and a game engine. IT WAS AWESOME!! Still is tbh - though no longer supported. Anyhow, it had an AA feature in the main render settings that you could actually turn off and it made the render SOOOOO much faster! I don't know why, but wow... I had seen a lot about FXAA and other post-processing version of AA that get used in games, such as super sampling and so on, but there was nothing in Blender at the time, only talk.

I got to work one day around mid 2018! It was rough!
The hardest part is telling the computer what is aliasing and secondly, how to tell it to handle it. It basically works by testing for contrasting edges and then blurs those horizontally and vertically and this also blurs diagonal lines - which I still have no idea how to test for. It turned out SUPER well at the end of the day, but it was still slow. Depending on the scene and resolution of the image, it could sometimes be much slower than the render - not ideal.

I used it in production when I got invited to give a workshop on NPR at a local studio. WHAT AN HONOR! Didn't get to do it, because covid, but man, I was excited and scared out of my mind, hahaha. Anyway, for the opening, I took one of the studio's characters and made a little skit from it. For some of those shots, I used this post processing method to get faster render times and it was identical to sampled AA - except on some diagonal edges. Keep in mind these were really high contrast sequences I'm referring to.

Today, Blender 2.9+ has a MUCH faster AA node built in that also gives great results, though mine is still closer to the real thing - see the zoomed in sprinkle comparison image.

I uploaded the test frames here - leading with the sprinkles side by side and a frame from Esther with and without.

I don't feel like I've wasted my time, because for 3 years, I actually had an option to post-AA when there was no option and in some respects it still looks better. If you'd like to play with it, you are more than welcome. I have a ton of other nodes groups too - of course, as always and with anything you download - it is entirely at your own risk!
http://www.pantherdynamics.yolasite.com/downloads.php

NB: The ones available from my site are slower - I removed parameters and the use of the depth map to make it faster. I haven't updated the file in a while. If you'd like to request the faster one specifically, you can send me a message! :D