Shader writing with OSL - 3
In blog articles from last year, I looked at writing shaders in Open Shading Language (OSL), which is supported by Redshift. Having spent some time looking at this, it turns out not to be quite as simple as it first looks. This is mainly due to the fact that different render engines implement OSL in slightly different ways, so that converting shaders from one engine to another isn't always straightforward.
For this reason, I'm starting a section on this site devoted to OSL shaders, specifically with Redshift for Cinema 4D in mind. The first part is an introduction, and the second part will feature some of the pitfalls and gotchas you can encounter when using OSL. These are all issues I've encountered and it might at least save anyone thinking of having a go at OSL shader writing some time and frustration.
Along the way I will also make some shaders available for download. Mostly, these will be conversions of shaders written for other render engines, but may include some original ones as well.
I hope this will be useful. At the very least, I find personally that writing something down makes it much easier to remember it, rather than just reading about it. Not as good as actually doing it, but a good foundation.
The first two parts of this sections are now available - see here for links to the respective pages.
Page last updated July 11th 2025