# DoF-Gaussian: Controllable Depth-of-Field for 3D Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00746 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00746/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Towards Robust Monocular Depth Estimation: Mixing Datasets for Zero-shot Cross-dataset Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.01341/) (2019)
- [Depth Map Prediction from a Single Image using a Multi-Scale Deep Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2283/) (2014)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [Depth Pro: Sharp Monocular Metric Depth in Less Than a Second](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02073/) (2024)
- [NeRF in the Dark: High Dynamic Range View Synthesis from Noisy Raw Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13679/) (2021)
- [DepthSplat: Connecting Gaussian Splatting and Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13862/) (2024)
- [DNGaussian: Optimizing Sparse-View 3D Gaussian Radiance Fields with Global-Local Depth Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.06912/) (2024)
- [NerfingMVS: Guided Optimization of Neural Radiance Fields for Indoor Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01129/) (2021)
- [Deblur-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from Blurry Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14292/) (2021)
- [Depth-Regularized Optimization for 3D Gaussian Splatting in Few-Shot Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13398/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Ray Tracing: Fast Tracing of Particle Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07090/) (2024)
- [Learning the Depths of Moving People by Watching Frozen People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.11111/) (2019)
- [RaDe-GS: Rasterizing Depth in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01467/) (2024)
- [MVSGaussian: Fast Generalizable Gaussian Splatting Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.12218/) (2024)
- [BAD-NeRF: Bundle Adjusted Deblur Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12853/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Depth-of-Field with a Single-Camera Mobile Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.04171/) (2018)
- [DP-NeRF: Deblurred Neural Radiance Field with Physical Scene Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12046/) (2022)
- [Deblurring 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00834/) (2024)
- [BAD-Gaussians: Bundle Adjusted Deblur Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11831/) (2024)
- [Rendering Natural Camera Bokeh Effect with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05698/) (2020)
- [BokehMe: When Neural Rendering Meets Classical Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12614/) (2022)
- [BAGS: Blur Agnostic Gaussian Splatting through Multi-Scale Kernel Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04926/) (2024)
- [Synthetic Defocus and Look-Ahead Autofocus for Casual Videography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.06326/) (2019)
- [Lighting Every Darkness with 3DGS: Fast Training and Real-Time Rendering for HDR View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06216/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Generative Refocusing: Flexible Defocus Control from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16923/) (2025)
- [DET-GS: Depth- and Edge-Aware Regularization for High-Fidelity 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04099/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking PhD-Level Coding in 3D Geometric Computer Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.30038/) (2026)
- [Unblur-SLAM: Dense Neural SLAM for Blurry Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26810/) (2026)
- [Every Camera Effect, Every Time, All at Once: 4D Gaussian Ray Tracing for Physics-based Camera Effect Data Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10759/) (2025)
- [Practical High-Fidelity Novel-View Synthesis of Mounted Lepidoptera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31679/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS) have shown remarkable success in representing 3D scenes and generating high-quality, novel views in real-time. However, 3D-GS and its variants assume that input images are captured based on pinhole imaging and are fully in focus. This assumption limits their applicability, as real-world images often feature shallow depth-of-field (DoF). In this paper, we introduce DoF-Gaussian, a controllable depth-of-field method for 3D-GS. We develop a lens-based imaging model based on geometric optics principles to control DoF effects. To ensure accurate scene geometry, we incorporate depth priors adjusted per scene, and we apply defocus-to-focus adaptation to minimize the gap in the circle of confusion. We also introduce a synthetic dataset to assess refocusing capabilities and the model's ability to learn precise lens parameters. Our framework is customizable and supports various interactive applications. Extensive experiments confirm the effectiveness of our method. Our project is available at https://dof-gaussian.github.io.