Question for the sprite gurus

[Sgt. Groovy]

I'm trying to learn the ropes of sprite art, and studying the mainline sprites, I've noticed there isn't much in the way of anti-aliasing in them. Since the engine supports full alpha channel, it must be a stylistic feature.

As aliased, the sprites have sharp edges, which make them stand out better from the background, but obviously introduces some jagginess, especially to the thinner parts. What's the experienced sprite artists' opinion on sprite anti-aliasing?

[battlestar]

Anti alias it a little bit if it's too obviously jagged and don't over do it (ie making it too smooth) would be my view. It's hard to explain but some lines look just fine w/o anti-aliasing, especially when the lines are softened using color.

[Jetrel]

I'm trying to learn the ropes of sprite art, and studying the mainline sprites, I've noticed there isn't much in the way of anti-aliasing in them. Since the engine supports full alpha channel, it must be a stylistic feature.

As aliased, the sprites have sharp edges, which make them stand out better from the background, but obviously introduces some jagginess, especially to the thinner parts. What's the experienced sprite artists' opinion on sprite anti-aliasing?

More than anything else, it's a time consideration.

Using non-black edges (which we generally try to do) already garners some of the advantages that antialiasing would give. They're a closer luminosity to the ground, whatever it is, and that makes them blend better.


In certain cases, like when I have a jet black unit with such an edge, I'll use some antialiasing to smooth things out. Probably the biggest advice I can give is to not bother doing this on most animations - it's not worth the time spent.

[TheLost1]

I'm not as good as those who posted above, but I anti-aias everything that would otherwise be jagged with prodigous use of the opacity slider.