Name

Stephen Friedman

Title

Sr software engineer (Renderman handyman/osl hacker)

Favourite character

Wall-e, the most emotive trash compactor I’ve ever seen

Favourite feature

My favourite Renderman feature is the integration of Open Shading Language (OSL). It allows artists flexibility and creativeness in an approachable language tailored to the work they do. Through the magic of just-in-time compiling in OSL, Renderman can then take complex shaders, and optimise the execution specifically to the current render. This can take into account the scene, material settings, rendering task, and even the instruction set of the hardware it’s being run on to make the most of the resources you have (or are borrowing from the cloud). This means as an artist you can focus on getting the neon cheese-puff powder looking so lifelike the entire audience will need to wash their hands, while the renderer focuses on getting you images ASAP.