BOOM! Good point and I remember that thread now. Just checked my card setting and sure is... I did set DSR to 4.00x native resolution at the time...  and forgot about it. :Whistling:

There is another twist to all this that was discussed last year. That is that if you run your card with virtual resolutions (DSR in Nvidia speak) and render out at something smaller (like 1080) that you'll get really good anti-aliasing with no speed penalty. It's like doing SS but faster.

Wildstar found that he could render in preview mode with it looking like SSx3.

The thing being discussed here may be a result of screen-space effects. That's why things like DOF get much more pronounced, like actually looking something shot at F1.4.

Guy, you were partially right. I was mostly paying attention to glowing part of the test video, which came out the best. But nonetheless...
You're still talking about an ordinary rendering and super-sampling and posting examples of UHD renders. Sure it works as expected because super-sampling is taking place.. nothing really new here.
Those do not apply when you try to render with full blown render viewport.
And that is what I am trying to show here. I did not render and talk about UHD. Instead I render HD on UHD viewport (I hope you do not get confused again :) ).
And yes, anti-aliasing is taking place without super-sampling in this case.

Here are my examples blown to 800%. All renders are 1920x1080 (HD), but taken under different viewport size

Normal viewport, NO SS


Normal viewport, 3x3 SS


UHD viewport, NO SS


As you see there is a very small difference between render with SS in normal viewport and with NO SS in UHD viewport. And that is what I am talking about here

Lol ok, so I was right to suspect my understanding of your wordings ^^

4u2ges (3/10/2018)

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../..Now the iCLone super-sampling in this render setup is irrelevant and it simply does not have any effect on a final render, whether I turn it ON or set OFF../..

It can't be. Perhaps you just don't notice it due to the low contrast of your scene and the high resolution.

4u2ges (3/10/2018)

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../..But at the same time the anti-aliasing is still taking place and works whole lot better than iClone super-sampling. Why? I cannot be sure. I can only speculate.
Possibly I am getting a "Spatial anti-aliasing" effect (Indigo super-sampling works that way, not sure about iCLone)../..

Again, it can't be, there is NO iClone "internal" antialiasing taking place outside the super-sampling feature.

4u2ges (3/10/2018)

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../..Just look at the last 4 sec of my test video. Super sampling is OFF there. But it looks a lot better that 2 previous parts where I had super-sampling ON../..

I can't see any difference in antialiasing between those part, I think you qualify the last part being "better" because you are focused on the glare.

Ok, now, lets try to understand. If there is indeed antialiasing happening during your renderings despite the fact you did not enabled super-sampling, then the only reason I can think of is that because anti-aliasing is "forced" in your graphic card drivers settings. If not, then there is no antialiasing and you are blind lol.

Well, to be sure of that, lets experiment this, I'll do it on my side too:

1) Open the default Project Template -> 1. Character -> 2. Turntable (the horse)
2) Be sure render settings are Image/UHD/Final Render/ NO SS.
3) F10 then save the image
4) Do the same but this time enable SS 3x3
5) Open the images in any image viewer - ie photoshop - and zoom both images to 800%

You then should clearly see the difference.

Here Without Super Sampling (no anti-aliasing):



And Here With Super Sampling 3x3 (anti-aliasing is clearly present):




--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

This problem is obviously affecting a lot of us. Some of us significantly.
Does any know if a bug been filed under Iclone 7 in the feedback tracker?
I’d love to add my vote to it.

@grabiller
lol no, that is not what I did. I do not shrink images after the render.
I did set my computer screen resolution to 3840x2160. Then in iClone I did set the viewport size (you can call it a 3D viewer or viewport, it does not really matter) to a full screen with Ctrl+7 and set the render export size to 1920x1080. Then started render. That is it. 
Now the iCLone super-sampling in this render setup is irrelevant and it simply does not have any effect on a final render, whether I turn it ON or set OFF.
But at the same time the anti-aliasing is still taking place and works whole lot better than iClone super-sampling. Why? I cannot be sure. I can only speculate.
Possibly I am getting a "Spatial anti-aliasing" effect (Indigo super-sampling works that way, not sure about iCLone).
Just look at the last 4 sec of my test video. Super sampling is OFF there. But it looks a lot better that 2 previous parts where I had super-sampling ON.

HDR Glares do not work as expected either in this setup and has nothing to do with initial settings in the HDR panel. But I do not really care about it either. as long as I get perfectly anti-aliased image.


@justaviking
I perceive it as a bug too (regardless whether RL mentioned about it in the manual or not). You are right, the final render should be the same or better quality as the viewport regardless of it's size. Sigh...

@4u2ges - So it a feature, not a bug?  Boo!

I can understand some minor differences, especially because of the "real time" aspect of iClone.  But the final render should always be superior, never inferior, to what you see in the real time viewport.

I don't remember all the details, but as people shrunk their viewport, rendering times would gradually improve (as an example), until some after you passed a certain size and then the render times would start to increase again.  That could happen even if you were on a 1920x1080 screen (meaning the viewport portion of your iClone window would always be smaller than that) and you were rendering out to HD 1920x1080.

In what way is unexpected and unpredictable behavior a benefit to the user?

Somewhat documented or not, I perceive most of this behavior as a BUG.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

4u2ges (3/10/2018)

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../.. UPDATE: I got much better and faster results rendering 2k in 4k screen resolution mode if I turn super-sampling OFF. When it's ON for some reason I am getting an overwhelming (uncontrollable) amount of glares (although the scale is set to minimum). I suppose there is no need for super-sampling at all in this case, as anti-aliasing is taking place internally with much better outcome when frame is down-scaled from 4k to 2k.../..

I'm really confused by your wordings ;). You mean you render your image sequences (I presume) at 4K resolution (which is independent of your screen resolution) then you downsize those images to 2K for your final video ?

If that so then allow me to disagree about super-sampling: You should always use the highest available super-sampling values to get the maximum anti-aliasing quality as possible (3x3 is already quite poor). Down-sizing helps but it is far from being as efficient as multi-sampling. The result should be "better" in any case.

There is no antialiasing taking place "internally". If you don't activate Super Sampling at render time there is no antialiasing occurring whatsoever (except for the downsizing poor antialiasing effect).

If for some reason this introduces "glare" then the problem is elsewhere (HDR) and should be fixed. I would rather have a better antialiasing than glare, because I can always recreate glows and glares in post-prod, while good antialiasing I can't.


--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

@justaviking
Sadly, I don't think this would ever gets fixed, or properly explained. Just found in the official manual something that relates to the issue (it was apparently added for IC v6.5):
http://manual.reallusion.com/iClone_7/ENU/Pro/Default.htm#iClone_7/Pro_7.0/12_Export/WYSIWYG.htm%3FTocPath%3DRendering%7C_____2

@Kelleytoons
Yes, I quit rendering from quick mode. It most likely crashes because before "final render" begins, IC converts the scene to "High" mode and at the end of the render back to "Quick" mode. So that it can use viewport as a source for building frames.
For "preview render" it just grabs the current screen with whatever mode you have currently set.



UPDATE: I got much better and faster results rendering 2k in 4k screen resolution mode if I turn super-sampling OFF. When it's ON for some reason I am getting an overwhelming (uncontrollable) amount of glares (although the scale is set to minimum). I suppose there is no need for super-sampling at all in this case, as anti-aliasing is taking place internally with much better outcome when frame is down-scaled from 4k to 2k.

So very true!

I  could complain (AGAIN) about the lack of communication with the development staff (even indirectly) when we have some very legitimate, thoroughly-vetted questions like this.  We should not have to figure this out by observation, trial-and-error, and other indirect means.  They have access to the code and the development tools, we do not.

And more than anything else, this makes no sense at all, and should have been fixed a long time ago.



Making your iClone "application window" small - which results in a smaller viewport - affects rendering speed, and various quality issues such as Depth of Field.  Some of these things have been fixed, or at least improved, but it's still ridiculous that us users should be impacted by something as odd as that.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD