Depth of field / bokeh
Camera-like focus blur rendered from scene depth, including the soft discs or aperture shapes made by out-of-focus lights.
See it
What it is
Rendered depth of field uses the scene's depth buffer to keep one distance sharp and blur pixels farther in front of or behind it. Bokeh is the appearance of those out-of-focus areas, especially bright points that spread into discs or aperture-shaped highlights. Together they imitate a camera lens after the 3D scene has been drawn.
Reach for it to isolate a product, direct attention in a cinematic shot, or make depth legible in a close-up. It is the same instinct as an iPhone's Portrait mode, except the depth here is real scene depth rather than an estimate. Focus distance chooses the sharp plane; aperture and maximum blur control how quickly the rest falls away.
Gotcha: excessive blur makes a full-size scene look like a miniature and can smear silhouettes because the effect only has a flat depth image, not the hidden background behind an object. Apply it before drawing crisp interface text, and inspect transparent particles and hair for depth-sorting artifacts.
Ask AI for it
Add cinematic depth of field to this three.js product shot with EffectComposer and BokehPass after RenderPass. Set focus to the product's camera-space distance, keep aperture low enough that its front and logo remain sharp, and cap maxblur so the background lights become soft bokeh discs without erasing the silhouette. Render HTML labels after the canvas pass so interface text stays crisp.