In Nebula Shade, an OSL Shading project

For a student project, we need to make Nebula volume from a picture of real Nebula.

The goal was not to have a scientifically correct representation. It was to have color and shape of the photo on a beautiful volume render.

The shader makes to a 3D volume extrusion, adds some fractal complexity and stars around.

It uses two images:
• the original photo of the nebula
• a modified one, representing the depth of the nebula (made with photoshop).

It is 100% OSL.

It can be adapted to any OSL renderer with volume closures: Arnold, Cycles, etc :

Here is the film :



Enjoy !

From blender to any OSL Renderer, and back !

See you in Amsterdam !

From Blender to any OSL Renderer, and Back !

What about an OSL drink ?

OSL in Autodesk 3DSMax 2019

This is the very good news of the latest 3DS Max release, from Autodesk.

An OSL pattern generator is now included in 3DS Max 2019 !!!

It is awesome ! It can export to bitmap, for non-OSL renderer. Shaders are fully intergrated in OSL renderers, like Arnold.

It's optimisation is not done shader by shader, but for the whole node tree. So many little shaders would go as fast as a very big one doing the same thing! That's Excellent!

Other nice things: you can edit and compile OSL scripts inside 3DS Max, or even link them to your scene (or unlink to file, in 3DS Max terminology)!


Indeed, I just have one thing to say...
In 2012, Blender was the first to do all of this!

Brecht Van Lommel did a wonderful job on OSL integration in Cycles, as he did a wonderful job for Solid Angle Arnold.

For now 6 years, we use Blender for easy OSL dev., using included script editor, realtime render update, etc...
And, most impressive, Blender is still ahead! It includes closures and other advanced OSL functions not yet available in 3DSMax.

I started teaching OSL using Blender in 2013. Students were wondering why... Now, they are immediately proficient in writing OSL Shaders in 3DS Max 2019, from the first day!
Now, they can use their knowledge in the biggest and most powerful renderers !

Just because I started teaching OSL 5 years ago !

Long time before this standard was widely available, long time before autodesk decide that it's should be included in mainstream softwares, I was teaching OSL on Blender, Maya and 3DSMax (yes! 3DS Max!) for years!

Because, when your are teaching, you should NOT teach what exists now. You should NOT answer the actuel needs.

You have to teach what will exist when the students will leave school.
You have to teach what will be needed in the next 2, 3 or 10 years!

If you do so, your students will adapt themselve immediately to new technologies! Because they try them before all others.

And Blender is a wonderful tool for this goal.

So, if you are teacher, remeber this :


Go boldly where no human has gone before !


OSL in 3DS Max is the perfect illustration of this story!

WIP, NPR Lighting Shader

Here are the first results from my NPR Lighting Sahder.

It works with Arnold, with Autodesk Maya. It should work with 3DSMax, but the light rig would be much more difficult to do.

It is intend to be used for this year student's projects. It renders a NPR lighting, with colored non-realistic Rim Light, color shadows from the Main Light, some kind of AO, and some other features...

Giant LED Screen, an OSL shader for every renderer

The Giant LED Screen shader is an OSL shader used for teaching how to adapt shaders for any OSL compatible renderers.

The shader is rather complex. It is using object individual ID, distance to the camera, U and V quantization, and emission.

Making a version for each rendering software is not easy, as a lot of this features change fron one renderer to another. Indeed, it is a really good exercise for teaching portability !

Tested versions are for :
- ARNOLD (Solid Angle), for 3DSMax and Maya.

- Clarisse IFX ( Isotropix)

- Cycles, for Blender.

- Renderman (Pixar), Renderman 21.5 for Maya.

- Vray for 3DS Max (Chaosgroup)

If I have opportunity to try to adapt it to other renderers, I would update this post.


Shader features are :
: Simulate LED and local led glow
: LED visibility according to camera distance. This is very useful for having a total moiré control.
: Simulation of dead pixels and led chunk visibility and non uniformity.
: Screen color, useful for road sign...
: Slideshow of up to 10 pictures, with fading as transition.
: random pictures on each object, so no screens in the scene are identical.
: base luminosity of the screen

Enjoy !

OSL GiantLedScreen Shader from François Gastaldo on Vimeo.

OSL Juggler everywhere !

Well, not exactly everywhere...

Unfortunately, I don't have access to all renderers of my OSL Renderer BIG LIST.

So, I tried to adapt my OSL Juggler, based on 1986 Eric Graham's 3D Juggler, to OSL compatible renderers I could use.

Despite including a full ray tracing renderer in itself, the OSL Juggler Shader is rather simple. It just use I and P variables, in world coordinate system, and the emission() closure.

The main adaptation was Y up and direction of I.

You can find :

Juggler for Blender

Juggler for Renderman

Juggler for Arnold + 3DSMax 2018

Juggler for Arnold + Maya

Juggler for Vray Max and Maya

Juggler for Isotropix Clarisse IFX

Juggler for Appleseed, Blenderseed and Maya


If you want an adaptation of the Juggler for your Renderer, email me.
Then, send me a link to download an useable version of your software (at least for 30 days...) and to some documentation of how to include an OSL shader.

I'll contact you if I would find any problem.

The OSL Juggler shader doesn't use advanced OSL fonctions (not getattribute, no trace, etc...), so it could work on any software using OSL.

Enjoy playing with the 1986 Erci Graham's JUGGLER! The animation that changed the world of 3D forever...

OSL Juggler for 3DSMax 2018 with ARNOLD

----------> JUGGLER for 3DSMax 2018(Autodesk) with ARNOLD MaxtoA (Solide Angle) :


You can download the shader HERE.

You have to follow the documentation to add it to MaxtoA (in Installation).

It's a material shader, you have to Assign Material to Selection.

OSL Juggler for Maya to ARNOLD !

----------> JUGGLER for Maya to ARNOLD (Solide Angle) :


You can download the shader HERE.

It's a material shader. you have to assign it to your selected objects to use it.
Put the .oso and .mtd your " C:\solidangle\mtoadeploy\2017\OSL " directory, and you'll have a new Juggler node available from the HyperShade shader list.