Accurate Depth of Field Simulation in Real Time

• Published in: Computer graphics forum Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 15 - 23
• Main Authors: Zhou, Tianshu, Chen, Jim X., Pullen, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-03-2007
• Subjects: Accuracy; depth buffer; depth of field; GPU; I.3.3 Computer Graphics: Picture/Image Generation: Display algorithms; I.3.7 Computer Graphics: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism: Virtual reality; I.4.3 Image Processing and Computer Vision: Enhancement: Filtering; leakage; post-processing; Real time; Simulation; Studies
• ISSN: 0167-7055; 1467-8659
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8659.2007.00935.x

We present a new post processing method of simulating depth of field based on accurate calculations of circles of confusion. Compared to previous work, our method derives actual scene depth information directly from the existing depth buffer, requires no specialized rendering passes, and allows easy integration into existing rendering applications. Our implementation uses an adaptive, two‐pass filter, producing a high quality depth of field effect that can be executed entirely on the GPU, taking advantage of the parallelism of modern graphics cards and permitting real time performance when applied to large numbers of pixels.