Render to multisample buffer and resolved frame buffer independently

Question

So im doing some graph drawing using GL_LINE_STRIP's and i am using a multisampled buffer so the lines dont look so jagged. the problem is i have some lines in the background of the graph that act as a legend. The multisampling kind of screws the lines up cause they are meant to be exactly 1 pixel thick, but because of the multisampling, it will sometimes put the line spread over 2 pixels that are slightly dimmer than the original colour, making the lines look different to each other.

Is it possible to render those legend lines directly to the resolved frame buffer, then have the multisampled stuff drawn on top? this will effectively not multisample the background legend lines, but multisample the graph lines.

Is this possible? I just want to know before i dive into this and later find out you cant do this. If you have some demo code to show me that would be great as well

Answer 1

It would be much easier if the legend came last: You could just resolve the MSAA buffers into the view framebuffer and then normally render the legend into the resolved buffer afterwards. But the other way won't be possible, since multisample resolution will just overwrite any previous contents of the target framebuffer, it won't do any blending or depth testing.

The only way to actually render the MSAA stuff on top yould be to first resolve them into another FBO and draw that FBO's texture on top of the legend. But for the legend to not get completely overwritten, you will have to use alpha blending. So you basically clear the MSAA buffers to an alpha of 0 before rendering, then render the graph into it. Then you resolve those buffers and draw the resulting texture on top of the legend, using alpha blending to only overwrite the parts where the graph was actually drawn.