ABSTRACT
Computers are discrete devices that display a finite number of pixels, work with a finite number of colors, and in the case of ray tracing, sample scenes at a finite number of discrete points. This chapter helps readers to understand what aliasing is and what causes it in ray tracing; understand why they cannot completely eliminate aliasing in all ray-traced images; and implement antialiasing in the bare-bones ray tracer with uniform, random, and jittered sampling patterns. The simplest antialiasing technique is to render the scene at a higher pixel resolution, because that requires no additional programming. Most aliasing can be replaced by noise if we use rays that are randomly distributed over the pixel surfaces. Random sampling is not the best way to distribute rays over the pixel because the samples can clump together and leave gaps. A better strategy is to force a more even distribution of the samples over the pixel, while maintaining the randomness.
