Depth of Field (Deprecated)

Depth of Field (Deprecated) is a common postprocessing effect that simulates the properties of a camera lens. The name refers to the fact that the effect was added in Unity 3.4, but now is superseded by a more modern Depth Of Field effect which uses optimized techniques to simulate lens blurs and enables better transitions between focal areas. However, depending on the use case, performance might be a lot better in the old 3.4 version as it was developed for older hardware.

In real life, a camera can only focus sharply on an object at a specific distance; objects nearer or farther from the camera will be somewhat out of focus. The blurring not only gives a visual cue about an object’s distance but also introduces bokeh which is the term for pleasing visual artifacts that appear around bright areas of the image as they fall out of focus.

An example of the new Depth of Field effect can be seen in the following images, displaying the results of a defocused foreground and a defocused background. Notice how the foreground blur overlaps with the rest while the background doesn’t.

You might also consider using the Tilt Shift effect for a more straightforward but less sophisticated depth-of-field effect.

As with the other image effects, you must have the Standard Assets Effects package installed before it becomes available.

Properties

Note that since the bokeh effect is created by drawing triangles per pixel, it can drastically affect your framerate, especially if it’s not adjusted optimally. Adjust the Size, Min luminance, Min contrast, Downsample and Resolution to improve performance. Also, since the screen is darkened before the bokeh shapes are applied, you should use an appropriate Blurriness level to remove possible artefacts.

Hardware Support

This effect requires a graphics card that supports Shader Model 3 and depth textures. See the Graphics Hardware Capabilities and Emulation page for further details and a list of compliant hardware.