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Point and area sampling


An Area  Sample  option  is  available for all wrapped shaders in the Color, Transparency, and Bump categories. When it is off, one sample is calculated to represent the color value of the pixel, which is called point sampling.

When  a  pattern  becomes  very small, point sampling leads to moiré pattern artifacts. When  area  sampling  is on, an average value is calculated for the pixel; it represents how much area the pixel covers on the rendered surface.

This eliminates the moiré artifacts, but causes longer rendering times. Note that the averaging technique is only applied in the Z-Buffer or Raytrace rendering modes, or if the Antialiasing option is also turned on in the Options dialog. All shader dialogs contain the same four button commands, namely OK, Cancel, Defaults, and Reset.