Been meaning to make this post for some time... I've NEVER used "Fine Art" anti-aliasing. EVER. For the past two years, I have tried various same scenes rendered both ways, my naked human eye can tell no difference. I have stared and studied until my eyes watered. Why should I use "Fine", if all it does is make my rendering take exponentially longer, with no visual difference? I'm making this post for someone to show me part of a scene where there is a difference. A line, a shadow, anything. Show me any difference at all. AgentSmith

Very little difference....

in the above images, the fine art AA seems to be a little crisper. admitedlly, I don't use fine artAA...i either use regular, or premium

in the above images, the fine art AA seems to be a little crisper. admitedlly, I don't use fine artAA...i either use regular, or premium

Here's how I think it works: Fine Art AA is full scene supersampling. Normal AA is only supersampling pixels of the image that have a high contrast with the pixels next to them. The Fine Art AA also has a higher degree of supersampling (if you use settings of 16 or higher) When using noisy textures or high contrast textures Fine art is clearly better. I'll make a post tomorrow or maybe this evening to demonstrate it.

I have found a difference in the clarity of a fine geometric texture in the distance or the visual resolution of a small object as it approaches a small number of pixels. On large objects close to the camera, no effect really. (at least from my experience)

Ah, there is a big difference - but only on certain types of render. As Incarnadine says, detail, especially on distant objects, can be entirely missing on standard render, whilst present on fine art. The image I included doesn't show it too well because the proc texture is blurred anyway, but it gives an idea. When I'm spot-rendering in the last stages of a pic I always use fine art or premium32+ because otherwise I tend to miss stuff. And reflections don't come out well on standard, either. I normally use premium 64 for renders unless the time is prohibitive, when I use fine art 16 or something. I've yet to find a difference between 64 & 256 rays per pixel however... ;)

I use the Fine Art setting only in plop-render, to get a slightly crisper texture on a small area - for example, I was able to get a more realistic plume of smoke rising from an incense burner by just re-rendering that small area with Fine Art AA. Sometimes I'll use it on a figure face too. Don't see any use for it on a whole scene.

Fine Art anti-aliasing can help if you intend to output at large format sizes. If your image only needs to be 2,000 or 3,000 pixels wide, setting the resolution one step higher and rendering with regular anti-aliasing is faster than fine art at your original reolution. The results seem to be just as good. Hope this makes sense.

The thinner the lines in your render the more you would want to go to fine art. Rigging in a ship for example would be a good one for fine art. Just a ship with a sunset and no thin lines wouldn't matter so much. However, the larger you want to render, the more likley you would want fine art. its a detail thing. If the fine detail just doesn't matter cuz its a 640x480 render for a 12 inch laptop screen then who cares. If someone is going to be looking at your work up close and personal, like a poster or portfolio, then fine art starts to make senses.

Alright, thanks for the info...mystery solved. I still had some doubts until I did it myself here. The pic is fairly self-explainatory. You can see the difference in the three faces there in the distance. I still don't think I'll have much use for it...but when I do want to keep distant detail, I'll remember this. Thanks! (Sorry for the 157kb pic, I was trying to keep the artifacts to a minimum) AgentSmith

I can only use regular aa on my machine. Everytime I try to use one of the other two Bryce shuts down with an illegal error message.

Sounds like you need to uninstall/re-install.

That's awesome, AgentSmith! I'm glad you asked it, I would've felt stupid or stupid-er, anyway... Isn't Renderosity great!