Real-Time Depth-of-Field Rendering Using Point Splatting on Per-Pixel Layers

We present a real-time method for rendering a depth-of-field effect based on the per-pixel layered splatting where source pixels are scattered on one of the three layers of a destination pixel. In addition, the missing information behind foreground objects is filled with an additional image of the areas occluded by nearer objects. The method creates high-quality depth-of-field results even in the presence of partial occlusion, without major artifacts often present in the previous real-time methods. The method can also be applied to simulating defocused highlights. The entire framework is accelerated by GPU, enabling real-time post-processing for both off-line and interactive applications.