What's The Deal With Depth Of Field

Present in every game cinematic you've ever seen and now making its way to real time rendering, depth of field is one of the most, if not the most important effect for taking your graphics to the next level.
Topics covered: How cameras work, circle of confusion generation, proper near and far field blending, the bokeh blur, the karis average, and inverse tonemapping.
Real life example photos provided by: / alonelychime (please follow them!)
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Socials:
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Code: github.com/Gar...
References:
Practical Gather-based Bokeh Depth of Field - Wojciech Sterna
Efficiently Simulating the Bokeh of Polygonal Apertures in a Post-Process Depth of Field Shader - L. McIntosh, B. E. Riecke and S. DiPaola
Music:
Sandgem Town (Day) - Pokemon Diamond OST
Joy - Persona 3
During The Test - Persona 3
Afternoon Break - Persona 3
This Mysterious Feeling - Persona 3
Like A Dream Come True - Persona 4
Soft Oversight - Sonny Boy OST
ソウとセイジ - Sonny Boy OST
GO!GO!STYLE - Paradise Killer OST
arrow in thumbnail drawn by thlurp
Thanks for watching!
This video is dedicated to my friend, Alotryx.
#acerola #graphics #gamedev #unity3d #graphics #shaders

[@Acerola_t]

Sorry everyone I had to make an emergency vet visit so I couldn't catch the audio error Thankfully it's not very important, I just said that a camera doesn't distribute rays along a gaussian, so gaussian bad. Hope that helps!

[@forrestppando]

Hope your pet is okay!

[@sixty502]

I was 60% sure it was an intentional joke

[@TheBigYC]

Unwatchable. Reported to the FBI.

[@sebastienpautot]

@@TheBigYC Acerola can beat the FBI easily, his weapon is sharpened with a DOG.

[@Acerola_t]

@@forrestppando She's fine! Just had something stuck in her eye that I couldn't flush out myself.

[@ShuckleII]

As someone without perfect vision, depth of field just makes things look like my vision got 5x worse and it hurts, so I turn it off in almost every game

[@milosz204]

My vision is sharp but I do get the same feeling. I think many games use this and other effects wrong and while they do make the game look better, they also get in your way making it harder to see some details and make you strain your eyes unnecessarily.

[@mememanfresh]

same bro it just looks like myopia

[@andrewf8366]

I think the core issue is that in real life your eyes adjust to focus on what you want to focus on, while in an image your eyes can move around the image and there's no increase in sharpness in that you're trying to look at because the image has no idea what your eyes are trying to do

[@realdlps]

Bloom is the same for me, it feels like I took my glasses off

[@squirrelsyrup1921]

Wouldn't it be great to have forced depth of field, bloom and motion blur in real life

[@spuddie3207]

and remeber kids, once you setup your post-processing effects; reduce them all by 75% : )

[@Meg_A_Byte]

Words of wisdom!

[@denovodavid]

Thank you for making graphics programming accessible, understandable, and of course, fun ❤

[@Acerola_t]

Thanks so much!!

[@meqativ]

five a dolar

[@Choppy_Z]

​@@meqativ???

[@ravener96]

@@Choppy_Z five A$

[@meqativ]

what the fuck was the meaning of my previous comment

[@clearskyy]

this is seriously one of my favorite channels on this platform, god tier content

[@QuroWebArchive]

Trueee 😫💀

[@MrBb155]

Facts!

[@sexy_koala_juice]

Legit, props to you @acerola !!!

[@nguyenhoangminhtrung2779]

I love how much art skill this guy has, and he still includes the "transparent" background for the arrow.

[@mu4784]

Honestly super good for contrast!

[@monad_tcp]

Obiusly , otherwise how do we know it was transparent ?

[@cubo9620]

dude i really wasn't getting it until he explained it at 4:39, thank you bro 🙏

[@artsyaidan]

Something useful that I think may have been missed here is that optically, 1/3 of the "blurring" occurs on the far side of the focus distance while 2/3 on the near side. That may be why some of the examples are a little off of realistic, since they have a 50/50 split making the background more blurred and the foreground less blurred than they should be. (But I am just a photographer, not a shader programmer, great video! ✌️)

[@toastbrot97]

The octagon blur is probably more accurate if you're trying to simulate lenses with a smaller aperture, since a smaller aperture will exaggerate the actual shape of the aperture rather than averaging it to a circle. And since many lenses in the consumer market have between 6 and 10 aperture blades it would mean that on lower aperture values you would get a none circular bokeh. So if you really wanna go for ultimate realism you might wanna consider implementing a blending between circle and octagon or heptagon if the intesity of the blur gets lessened.

[@ratguy9281]

loved the part where you said 👍🏾

[@VetNovice]

Every time you drop a new video I’m ready for your humor, wit, and condensed learning. You’re one of my favorite gaming channels lately. You’re out of my depth of field in skill.

[@Acerola_t]

Thanks Alex!

[@Dawwo-qo3ky]

That moment when you check the playlist and stumble on an unlisted video

[@Acerola_t]

lmao whoops

[@ancientpixel9809]

I absolutely love your videos! I just recently got into shaders and "But you'll notice that the only result that appears is a random comment in some code" is so accurate! Just brilliant humor throughout! I also really like the contents, your videos are very helpful in understanding the idea behind all these visual effects! (especially since I'm too stupid to understand them myself...)

[@Acerola_t]

It's a tough road but eventually you'll be knowledgeable enough to understand research papers and then the sky is the limit!

[@timrobins98]

Just to clarify, a "small" aperture like f1.2 will have a smaller range of focus, but small is a misnomer. While the number gets smaller, the opening of the aperture actually gets bigger, so a large aperture like f18 will be a physically smaller opening, letting less light through, but also increasing the range of focus.

[@LukeFlavel]

The amount of talent you display in these immensely technical yet wonderfully engaging videos is just unreal.

[@Acerola_t]

Thanks so much!

[@TZerot0]

So as a photographer and someone very interested in optics, I hate DoF in videogames-why? Because the human eye doesn't work like a camera lens and doesn't really have a depth of field in the same way. The inclusion of DoF during gameplay might be cinematic, but it's not naturalistic and immediately takes me out of the game.

[@Cheesecannon25]

Human eyes most definitely have a DoF, it's just wider

[@TZerot0]

@@Cheesecannon25 hence my language: "doesn't really have depth of field in the same way" Furthermore human perception isn't limited to the physical restrictions of our eyes, and we most certainly aren't experiencing anything remotely similar to a camera lens's DoF

[@Acerola_t]

Yeah this is why I specified cinematic, games will probably never be able to replicate actual eye rendering because it will always feel disconnected from your actual eyes (until we have like brain attachments or something to detect your eye focus brain waves or whatever). I think using depth of field in first person is a bad idea, but cod modern warfare 2 did it really well imo

[@wolflight25]

@@Acerola_t PSVR having eye tracking that allows for foveated rendering could make a super interesting DOF effect for games, although as its your own eyes being tracked, I guess if you got it just right you would never actually notice it. I dunno maybe you would, at least others watching you play would be able to notice more often where your attention is.

[@_sophies]

I love the jab about how much of a PITA it is to learn anything about graphics programming, and I'm very thankful for your videos that do an amazing job of filling that gap.

[@emorial.mp4]

is 4:39 not supposed to have audio?

[@KoshakiDev]

Acerola manages to mix being serious and informative, but also somehow keep the video funny. Great job dude!

[@TreesPlease42]

It feels like Runescape meets SkillShare and I'm here for it 10/10

[@RAndrewNeal]

It's all good until you can only clearly see where the game thinks you're trying to look. Now we need eye trackers just to make this practical. But the eye strain would probably be unreal. But I always appreciate some good, efficient programming concepts explained at the right level of abstraction for a cursory glance. You always hit it out of the park.

[@Meteotrix]

awesome lesson! But I have to say, I personally kinda hate DOF in games so much, probably because practically everyone does it wrong. I used to hate motion blur too until everyone got better at using it °w° Subtle and relevant tends to work better I think :3

[@ro-ce8vg]

4:41 muted audio or am I stupid

[@ninjanolan6328]

1:46 You have it the wrong way around. As the aperture gets smaller, the light becomes more focused. The bigger the Aperture, the more blurring there is. Low F-stop: large aperture.

[@MarshmallowBoy]

I was thinking, this looks like shit, and then you said "now I know what you are thinking, Acerola, this looks like shit"

[@Stunex]

Great video - as always. But I really hate DoF in games :D (at least for gameplay) I think if I'm consistent with anything then it's that the first thing I do when I start a new game is to disable motion blur and dof.

[@HelgastJon]

DoF and motion blur are the first thing i turn off in the graphics settings of every game

[@thematicschematic]

Yeah, I'm not watching a movie, I'm immersing myself in a world. I don't want to feel like I'm looking through a camera - that just breaks immersion and makes things harder to see.

[@PDihax]

Man. I would die without knowing why he cant legally tell us about the Karis Average

[@l3gacyb3ta21]

me too

[@FinFET]

Such an amazing channel! I'm from Brazil and used to the acerola berry, but calling yourself Mr. Rola in portuguese sounds really funny 😅

[@MatheusPratta]

I agree, the moment he called himself Mr. Rola I started laughing myself so hard, oh man, 5th grade vibes still going very strong years later

[@LambOfDemyelination]

what's that moment of silence at 4:30

[@Nylnezz]

ho man acerola we need you more than ever Gshade did a BIG fucky wucky xD

[@Acerola_t]

my stuff works just fine with reshade if you decide to move

[@Nylnezz]

@@Acerola_t i probably will in the future for now the built in nvidia filters works just fine

[@bigscheesy4982]

Is the lack of audio at 4:39 intentional?

[@battmarn]

DoF goes on for screenshots but off for actual gameplay for me. I can't deal with things I'm trying to focus on with my eyes being blurry

[@Hipernt]

4:39 "I love game. And I don't like it when Game is not what gAmE says; THis game is the game"

[@Taro4012ITG]

honestly 4:39 didn't even feel like an audio error, it felt like a bit

[@CharleyLemayor]

your voice is missing at 4:39 O_O. else than that, high quality content as always :cheer_cat:

[@badimagerybyjohnromine]

I feel like depth of field and motion blur are lost in translation. Racing games that implement motion blur as part of the art style are completely lost on the majority of the audience, and there are some games even implementing depth of field bokeh at similar qualities to pre rendered cinematics yet most people see bokeh as image blurry=bad At first I thought it was just a group think sort of thing, people wanting to share in what they thought was an unpopular opinion to seem counter culture but its so obviously the majority who disdain it, it could not be that simple. Its like whenever someone adds SSR or codes a shader to simulate puddles when it rains. Its a sought after visual technique by so many developers so once its in the public conciseness' of a public who doesnt understand its intention all that hard work translates to little more than a meme

[@hoisamuro]

I love the monogatari style editing, love how that show used typography (graphic design nerd).

[@RealityvoidMe]

it's weird how many comp sci students I know that watch these

[@Layzy3D]

I was wondering : do you think it would be immersive if games added depth of field focusing at the place youre looking at (using an eye tracker for example) ?

[@AkiRa22084]

DoF should not be used in games without eye tracking, since you don't know what the players eyes are focusing on.

[@Acerola_t]

I do not agree!

[@AkiRa22084]

@@Acerola_t Try a game with eye tracking that respects what you want to look at, instead of forcing you to look at what it wants you. I learned this the hard way by developing VR games, you just get eye strain when games force you to focus on what they think you should all the time. Taking screenshots with DoF is fine.

[@Brob3r]

Could you make a video about toon shading (HiFi rush)

[@Mehtibbers]

For most games the first thing i do is turn DoF off completely, now it makes me sad seeing how much work goes into it. Anyone else prefer to have it off completely or at least on the lowest setting ?

[@Magnogen]

I will use Acerola Mapping in my next video game

[@fray9441]

"what the fuck is happening dear god" -me, throughout the entire video

[@Lain-404]

Thank you for breaking this down! I add DOF to almost every screenshot I take in a game, but always end up fighting with the grass because I didn't really know how DOF worked. The way you explained it makes a lot of sense! I'm excited to take more photos now that I know how the shaders work :3 (also the audio error was funny, even if it wasn't intended.)

[@f11bot]

That monogatari style title transition 👌👌👌

[@anzeg-]

Do your shaders work on ReShade since Gshade is gonna be a toxic cesspool?

[@Acerola_t]

Yeah they should work just fine but they do have some ff14 specific optimizations so they might not work for other games

[@anzeg-]

Oh man was I spot on, gposers discord just imploded after gshade had a malware payload in the last update.

[@Acerola_t]

@@anzeg- Kind of a gross exaggeration lol, the installer would restart your computer if you tried to tamper with the installer, which is something you shouldn't be doing anyways.

[@anzeg-]

@@Acerola_t Abusing admin access to force a restart is 100% a malicious act and a massive red flag. There's a hundred better ways to handle anti-tempering and this clearly shows horrible programming practices. It wasn't harmful to most users this time but it's a big breach of trust and shows what the dev is willing to do over petty shit

[@Acerola_t]

@@anzeg- consider the fact that it's funny tho

[@Garfield_Minecraft]

i took off my glasses depth of field 300%

[@urselhorst9253]

I love u man. every time I watch one of ur videos I can't stop thinking about ways i could implement this in my games. I started experimenting with shaders a few months ago and I'm hooked ever since.

[@harryragland7840]

1:27 a Censer while you talk about sensors. ha ha ha

[@Ferret440]

But why is it under NDA? 🤔

[@infokubarcade]

Hey mr Rola. At first i wanted to make a joke bc half of the time im in orthographic. But i'll be serious for a minute. It's been a while since im looking for pros making content for pros, with high tech and precise explanations. You are definetely one of them. Amazing content. I'll definetely be part of the Patreons club and i wish you the best for becoming a full time video maker. This platform is lacking so much of ppl like you. Peace !

[@luna010]

thank you for the video, aceroller

[@hughjanes4883]

I just realised, the arrow in the thumbnail points to nothing, this common in clickbait videos. BUT the videos is about blur, thus the arrow pointing to "nothing" POINTS TO THE VIDEO CONTENT! Very smart

[@havz0r]

DoF in any game -> instant disable

[@asandax6]

Am I the only one who hates Depth Of Field? The reason is because it makes parts of the images look like smudges when I want to see whats behind. The brain already applies automatic DoF when you focus on a specific part of an image so it makes the DoF unnecessary.

[@Acerola_t]

The brain does not apply DoF to an image since it's 2D lol

[@asandax6]

@@Acerola_t I meant that in the sense that it out focuses the part of the image you aren't focused on which is similar to the DoF.

[@mashewm]

Kind of weird since depth of field doesnt exist when you look at the real world with your eyes.

[@Acerola_t]

you can prove yourself wrong by holding your finger up to your eye and focusing on it

[@murilo5903]

Thank you for your video, is educational and fun to watch!, is such a shame that the Dev of Gshade decided to comite seppuko, rn i'm trying to use your presets in Reshade!. XOXO from Brazil

[@kam1k4dze]

Thanks for the great video! Even though I'm in the camp of those who think DOF looks like shit.

[@LSatoDemo]

Awesome video! I sincerely hope you can keep creating such high-quality content :)

[@Acerola_t]

Thank you!

[@TechJolt3d]

12:00 I found a learnopengl article that mentioned it (Though that link immediatly redirected me away to learnopengl's home page. I was however, successful in doing cntrl+s to save the webpage) Along with a slide set linked to that called "Next Generation Post Processing In Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" which is part of Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games Siggraph 2014

[@uncoherentramblings2826]

Lesgoo! New video and new cut on our boi.

[@esanscoopsers7538]

i don't get why game developers are so obsessed with making games look like they are being shot through a camera. shouldn't they be making games look like they are being seen through human eyes?

[@Acerola_t]

Because they can't make games look like they are seen through human eyes lol, everyone's eyes are different but cameras all work the same. There's also tons of stuff that despite being 100% realistic does not look realistic, and so people will say it looks bad despite being true to real life. This does not happen when you make games look like movies, because then people will think they look correct.

[@esanscoopsers7538]

@@Acerola_t damn people. there are so many camera effects that i just cannot tolerate and i wish it was more common to give players the option to turn them off. i'd like to hear your view on a lot of these effects. the main ones i avoid are: -chromatic abberation -film grain -motion blur (with some exceptions for per-object motion blur) -lens distortion -vignette -depth of field (unless the game uses the effect in a smart way instead of just bluring parts of the screen depending on where you're looking)

[@adam_badam]

The presets are already wonderful but I really appreciate the in depth explanation behind each effect. Recently, it has come to light that the GShade developer had included malware in the installer and due to the backlash GShade has been discontinued. Would these shaders be compatible with the regular ReShade, or would they require modification?

[@Acerola_t]

GShade has not been discontinued lol, he just took out the "malware" which was just something that prevented people from tampering with the gshade installer which only someone with malicious intent would do. You're good to continue using GShade, but if you switch to default ReShade, my shaders should work just fine (you'll just need to place the shaders in the proper folders that ReShade uses).

[@chrispysaid]

When he said 4:39 I felt that

[@devindykstra]

4:40 is this part supposed to be silent?

[@Acerola_t]

nope! please refer to pinned comment

[@devindykstra]

@@Acerola_t oops, somehow I missed that. This is a fantastic video! Thank you for making it!

[@eugenetarus6873]

I'd say film grain

[@LonewolfeSlayer]

Actually mad youtube didnt show me this video. Great stuff as always homie

[@Acerola_t]

Thanks! Not to shill but there's always my twitter/discord/youtube notifications to know when new videos are coming out

[@faik...]

It's sad that you legally cannot tell us.

[@crow4277]

new acerola LFG your videos are so amazing edit: watching this i'm realizing that my own script that im writing for a video on music theory and physics is actually accidentally drawing on your style and mannerisms whoops

[@Acerola_t]

new acerola looking for group Thanks! and no worries, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all. I'd be lying if I said I haven't drawn heavily on creators that inspired me.

[@RetroMMO]

Thank you Mr. Rola

[@pyryzer5324]

11:56 As someone from Karis, Finland, uhh... what a coincidence?? I'm probably the only person in Karis who knows about the Karis average now.

[@MrGoodKill_FR]

Excellent video as always :). Also, late to the party but for what it's worth "Next Generation Post Processing in Call Of Duty" mentions the Karis average!

[@EyItsAsh]

imo, i dislike DOF in games because I want to be able to look at things clearly that are not directly in the middle of the screen, like sure if you want a screenshot it looks great but my eyes can move

[@VilasNil]

I was watching the video and thought to myself... Wait, I've heard this song before... Is it Paradise Killer???? AND IT WASSSS what a God tier game with a banger of a soundtrack

[@bastian3461]

HEY I KNOW THAT OST 10:30 oml i should be listening caught me off guard there perfect balance between fps and graphically pleasing im listening edit: simply amazing that was awesome

[@marcusjohansson668]

90% of Valheims art direction?? I turned that shit off immediately. Am I the only one that thinks DOF is just making the visuals WORSE?

[@lolotronop]

Monogatari references and music from Sonny Boy on a computer graphics video? I'm 100% sold, degenerate brain happy, compooter loving brain happy, me happy, subscribed

[@d1ogo8351]

12:11 so... 'Rola' in my language is slang for "Penis". That caught me very off guard. Also "Acerola" is a fruit name here. Nice video tho.

[@Nickmav1337]

I'm trying to implement bloom a la Advanced Warfare in my renderer, and so I've come to need Karis Averaging. Holy shit you were not kidding about information on the topic being impossible to find. Even the AW slides reference a [Karis2013] paper but there's no bibliography so lol, lmao. The brief mention of it in this video is the only info about it I've been able to find so far.

[@bragunetzki]

I'm not even a graphics programmer, but I love your video's presentation (and how well they explain everything)

[@wabznasm9660]

I’d be interested in seeing an art style in a game - very dense scenes with no AA and chunky pixels (like 480p) and a depth of field that doesn’t blur but instead adds a downsampling effect, so that things out of focus can get incredibly low res. I mean it’d probably look like shit but I still want to see it.

[@Ragswolf]

Karis weighted average refers to @BrianKaris Sr. Graphics Programmer at Epic Games.

[@PetrVejchoda]

1:48 its the opposite. The smaller the aperture, the higher the range of focus. Since the ray of light itself is smaller, it makes smaller impact on the sensor.

[@jakesarjeant8326]

lmfao "Depth of Field accounts for 75% of Valheim's art direction" - Acerola, 2023

[@solitary200]

The gate keeping of game dev information is absurd. GDC is pretty bad too.

[@KaitlinGaspar]

15th!

[@monad_tcp]

The most important effect for realism ? I think it's having a camera in the scene. Once I forgor to put one, it wasnt very realistic. (camera is a special effect in my engine) I'm kidding

[@luisloyolaboyokan]

And what if I'm not a camera but an eye?? I'm no fan of simulating camera's bugs and limitations.

[@Arcangel0723]

I feel smart now yay. As soon as you mentioned standard dynamic range and high dynamic range I thought "hmm, sounds like a 1/x sort of problem".

[@HexklTheHexagon]

Nice waifu

[@nicky2262]

brb going to apply these with a depth camera IRL to get insane photos without spending thousands of dollars on lenses. real life depthbuffer FTW

[@sarbe6625]

depth of field is usually the first thing I turn off in the graphics settings, alongside motion blur. I've never once encountered a game where having these on enhanced my experience.

[@ianrussell4650]

Respectfully, DOF will still be the second setting I turn off in every game I play. (It looks pretty but obscures POIs and enemies)

[@Acerola_t]

In the event it obscures important information, that is a fault of the designers not the effect.

[@nix3l_]

hey, love the videos. i was wondering where you find the papers you use. is there a reference or a certain place you usually look, or is it just googling and hoping you find the right thing?

[@Acerola_t]

Usually I do a lot of googling. I also look through the table of contents for every gpu gems/pro/zen book to get real world implementation details, and I'll watch gdc talks and siggraph talks for ideally the most up to date tech. Often all it takes is one good recent paper and then you can go through all their references, for this video I was having a hard time finding good resources at all until I read the gpu zen article which then referenced a few other papers which were great.

[@nix3l_]

@@Acerola_t thanks! keep up the great work!

[@alexlarex7773]

Ah, a fellow monogatari series fan (correct me if i'm wrong). Stumbled on this vid randomly, stayed for the great info.

[@otter502]

Tilt lens?

[@andershour]

I got that depth that make her field sheeeeeeeeeeeeeesh

[@Acerola_t]

I'm deep in her field (of study)

[@kessler_could_not_care]

the main problem with depth of field (aside from not quite looking realistic) is that it's usually applied way too aggressively

[@gulligus]

Interesting