That's a really good looking texture, I love how smooth the anti alias is, and the surface of them looks very soft and fitting as well.
But at least it looks better than the current grass.
I would honestly prefer actual grass with an extremely light hint of SEGA checkerboard pattern that's only noticeable if you stop to check it out.
perfect........................................................... OHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDThis is as close to the original ring as I could get without it looking too ugly:
That calls for a re-render. I can't change the outlining outside of my modeling program, or the ring won't blend with it and it'll have jagged edges. I could modify the antialiasing manually, but it's easier to have it rendered with the ring. Also, this:The ring would be fantastic with an outline and a bit thicker anti ailias.
It's impossible to anti-alias the outline, because it's on a moving background (the sky). The reason it looks odd is that reason you just stated. When indexing the colors to SRB2's palette, the 50% or more opaque pixels are turned black, and the 49% or more transparent pixels are deleted..The outline of the ring, ribbon, and text have aliasing, but it kinda looks like a partial transparency that didn't stay transparent.