Depth of field rendering

Abstract

Depth of field (DOF) is the effect on lens and human eyes in which objects within some range of distances in a scene appear to be in focus, and objects nearer or farther than this range appear to be out of focus. It is frequently used in photography and cinematography to direct the viewer’s attention within the scene, and to give a better sense of depth within a scene. In Computer graphics, the demand on photorealistic pictures is increasing now. DOF is an effect which can make a computer graphic more realistic. To achieve the depth-of-field effect, some algorithms were designed for stimulating the effect. However, most of the existing algorithms are not able to run in real-time. Thus, DOF effect is difficult to be performed in VR applications or computer games. In this research, a new DOF rendering algorithm will be proposed and implemented with the help of GPU programming. The rendering performance can be improved a lot compare to the old algorithms.