Depth of Field Artifacts (Small Squares of Focus Shifting) in Movie Render Queue

[Mkp81]

Hello there. I’m experiencing an issue in Unreal Engine 5.5.1 where Depth of Field (DOF) behaves strangely in the Movie Render Queue. Despite setting the focus very close to the camera, small squares in the background appear in focus during the render. These squares progressively increase until the entire background is in focus, even though the editor and automation preview show the correct focus.
• High-Resolution settings are not enabled.
• I’ve tested a few different Anti-Aliasing methods and adjusted Temporal and Spatial Sample counts.

I hope you can see what I mean. This is already zoomed in. The tiles are pretty small squares. With frame one there is only one or two, those get more until everything is in focus.

Has anyone encountered this or have suggestions for resolving it?

[Mkp81]

So the culprit was the aperture size.

With 1.4 the tiles appear on close focus (focus very close to the lens). The more hi res your export is, the more you need to squint your aperture. With standard settings I could get away with an 1.8 still. With more resolution I am around 4 now. It is a buuug. But thanks ChatGPT tho. Pointed me to the solution after hours of trying together.

EDIT: And is has something to do with how close you’re focus actually is. So it is a trade-off of closeness and aperture size. Meaning you can’t go with a 4 and pull the focus closer to get more DOF.