I have some metaball pillows in the living room scene I'm working on that look much better not antialiased. In searching the forum, I seemed to see that you can only do this (with metaballs) by mask rendering. How exactly does mask rendering work step by step from beginning to final image? Thanks!

A lot of it will depend on what 2D editor program you use once you have the mask. I don't have the time right now to go into very much detail (I'm sure someone will explain better). 1. Render your scene completely with the AA on. 2. Select the metballs you wish to mask (not metaball groups, individual metaballs, if they are in a group select each seperately). Easy way to do this if they are in a group is to select the group then go to solo mode, unselect, then at the bottomof the screen select the metaball icon, this will select all metaballs on screen. 3. turn AA off in render options, render with just the object you wish to not have AA in solo mode. 4. select mask render and render in solo mode again, you should get a black background with the object all white. 5. use these 3 render in the 2D editor to merge the non-AA object into the AA scene.

Attached Link: http://www.bsmooth.de/BSolutions/#Antialias

Open up Photoshop 7, and open the antialiased render and the mask. Press ctrl-a with the mask showing and then ctrl-c. Go to the render of the scene and press ctrl-v. Select the magic wand tool. Click on one of the white areas of the mask, then hold shift and click on the other white area. In the kayers pallate click the eye right beside the mask layer to toggle vision. You now have a selection of the pillows. I don't know exactly what you want to do with them though, so it's up to you what you do now that you have the selection.

I'm wanting to have the pillows not have AA.

OK, then you don't have to composite, there's a much easier way. Select the pillow, and go into object attributes(the A beside the pillows) Hold shift and ctrl, then press the checkmark to exit the object attributes menu. Now render, and the pillows should antialias.

I've been informed through searching the forums that this doesn't work with metaballs.

Hmmm, so it doesn't, didn't know that, well, work your way to where I left off in post 5, with the selection active, and go to select->save selection, name it, and press OK. Open the non-antialiased document and press ctrl-a, ctrl-c, and go to back to the mask document, and ctrl-v. Go to select->load selection and select the previous selection from the channel scroll bar, check invert, and press OK. Hit delete. That's it, it should be properly positioned now(making sure that the mask layer isn't visible).