# Dr.Bokeh: DiffeRentiable Occlusion-aware Bokeh Rendering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.08843 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08843/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 Aug 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Generative Photography: Scene-Consistent Camera Control for Realistic Text-to-Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.02168/) (2024)
- [Generative AI for Cel-Animation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06250/) (2025)
- [Bokehlicious: Photorealistic Bokeh Rendering with Controllable Apertures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.16067/) (2025)
- [COHO: Context-Sensitive City-Scale Hierarchical Urban Layout Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11294/) (2024)
- [Bokeh Diffusion: Defocus Blur Control in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08434/) (2025)
- [BokehDiff: Neural Lens Blur with One-Step Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.18060/) (2025)
- [Dynamic Neural Radiance Field From Defocused Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05586/) (2024)
- [DoF-Gaussian: Controllable Depth-of-Field for 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00746/) (2025)
- [Generative Refocusing: Flexible Defocus Control from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16923/) (2025)
- [Repurposing Marigold for Zero-Shot Metric Depth Estimation via Defocus Blur Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17358/) (2025)
- [BokehFlow: Depth-Free Controllable Bokeh Rendering via Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15066/) (2025)
- [Any-to-Bokeh: Arbitrary-Subject Video Refocusing with Video Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21593/) (2025)
- [Fine-grained Defocus Blur Control for Generative Image Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06215/) (2025)
- [Boosting Monocular Metric Depth Estimation via Bokeh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12425/) (2025)
- [Learning to Refocus with Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19823/) (2025)
- [LensStyle: Learning the Optical Aesthetics for Controllable Stylized Lens Effect Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04939/) (2026)
- [Parameter-Free Neural Lens Blur Rendering for High-Fidelity Composites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17014/) (2025)
- [MODEST: Multi-Optics Depth-of-Field Stereo Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20853/) (2025)
- [Towards Photorealistic and Efficient Bokeh Rendering via Diffusion Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07429/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Bokeh is widely used in photography to draw attention to the subject while effectively isolating distractions in the background. Computational methods simulate bokeh effects without relying on a physical camera lens. However, in the realm of digital bokeh synthesis, the two main challenges for bokeh synthesis are color bleeding and partial occlusion at object boundaries. Our primary goal is to overcome these two major challenges using physics principles that define bokeh formation. To achieve this, we propose a novel and accurate filtering-based bokeh rendering equation and a physically-based occlusion-aware bokeh renderer, dubbed Dr.Bokeh, which addresses the aforementioned challenges during the rendering stage without the need of post-processing or data-driven approaches. Our rendering algorithm first preprocesses the input RGBD to obtain a layered scene representation. Dr.Bokeh then takes the layered representation and user-defined lens parameters to render photo-realistic lens blur. By softening non-differentiable operations, we make Dr.Bokeh differentiable such that it can be plugged into a machine-learning framework. We perform quantitative and qualitative evaluations on synthetic and real-world images to validate the effectiveness of the rendering quality and the differentiability of our method. We show Dr.Bokeh not only outperforms state-of-the-art bokeh rendering algorithms in terms of photo-realism but also improves the depth quality from depth-from-defocus.