Hello All,
I know there will always be some pixelation working with bitmap textures in a setting like sandy, but I am wondering if anyone has come up with a good strategy to reduce pixelation, especially with text (where it is, of course, most obvious).
Here is my current technique: I am writing my text in a movie clip, which I then draw to a BitmapData, which i use to create a TextureSkin for a Plane3D. Right now my attempts at optimization consist of playing with the size of the plane (and therefore the scaling of the texture). So far it's looked best with the dimensions of the plane set to about half the dimensions of the bitmap itself. Still, the text is far from smooth.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Also, what is the relationship between sandy units and on-screen pixels? If your object is at such a distance that its scale factor is 1 does that mean that its sandy dimensions equal its pixel dimensions?

I'll continue toying with the text and let you all know when i get a result I'm happy with.

On your real problem, I don't have the perfect answer. It would be good if Sandy had a VectorSkin, meaning that vector based images would be drawn as vectors, using the ActionScript drawing API. As it stands I would choose a simple sans serif font, to make it as readable as possible.

The other question is interesting. What you see at all times is a projection of the 3D objects on a 2D surface.
This is camera's view, and the relation between the "height" of the object and the number of pixels that height occupies, depends on two things
1. The distance between the camera and the object
2. The focal length of the camera lens ( is it a wide angle or telefocal lens)

How to formulate the question?

Well, this is an attempt to get circular evidence, I believe.
At least we have to define what a scale factor of 1 means.

If it means that the object occupies as many pixels as its Sandy dimensions say, the answer is always yes
But then again, I might have rushed to conclusion

There's actually a scale factor which is calculated in Sprite2DFace (and probably elsewhere) as follows:


Of course, knowing this, I'm sure i could easily answer my own question :-) I was just lazily hoping Thomas would give me the inside scoop.

Good news is, I've found a good way to smooth my text. I made class called SmoothTextureSkin which extends TextureSkin, and overrides the begin() method. The only thing I changed in this method is as follows:


It looks awesome, and it made me think that perhaps smoothing should be an option in TextureSkin rather than having it permanently switched off.

Sounds like a really good idea.
It will probably have a performance penalty, but having the option to switch smoothing on, would be great.
New things happen here all the time

Hi,
Yes great. I heard that need, and it is included in the 1.2 BETA 2 as far I remember.

So it would be included in the future versions too