Texture based method and system for the anti-aliasing of lines and characters

Abstract

A method for generating anti-aliased lines and characters is disclosed. The method comprises generating a texture map based on a distribution and applying the texture map to a polygonal region. In one aspect of this embodiment, the step of generating a texture map based on a distribution further comprises generating a texture map comprising a series of concentric half circles. In the texture map, the concentric half circles represent a decreasing intensity as the radius of the concentric half circle increases. Additionally, in one embodiment, the texture map is generated using a Gaussian distribution. In another aspect of this embodiment, for each texel in a texture map defining a character, the smallest distance between a texel and each line segment that forms a character is calculated. The smallest distance is used to determine an intensity value using the distribution. Then, the texel is associated with the intensity value to form a texture map for the character. Optionally, a halo value for each texel value can be determined by using the smallest distance found in conjunction with a second distribution to determine a halo value for each texel. This method can be repeated for each character to be displayed.