Antoine Bagattini, the creator of BagaPie has released BagaCam OSL, a camera add-on that implements Open Shading Language (OSL) camera shaders directly in Blender. It runs within Blender’s Cycles render engine, allowing users to apply and customise optical effects directly at render time rather than in compositing.
The add-on introduces a OSL-driven camera system, allowing effects to behave as part of the physical light simulation. Because the shaders influence ray casting rather than pixels, they interact properly with volumetrics, transparency, motion blur, and reflections, behaviours typically missing from post filters.
Built-in optical effects
BagaCam OSL ships with a preset browser containing camera looks based on real lens artefacts. Included effects are barrel and pincushion distortion, chromatic aberration, vignette, glow, and several depth-of-field variations. The system also supports custom bokeh shapes, including anamorphic and petzval patterns, directly within Cycles.
Each camera in Blender can hold its own preset. When switching between presets, parameters reset to their default values to maintain consistency across scenes. Advanced users can access the raw OSL shader parameters to tweak the optical model beyond the preset limits.
OSL under the hood
Open Shading Language (OSL) is a shading language designed for physically based rendering. Cycles’ OSL implementation lets artists define shaders that describe how rays behave rather than how pixels look. BagaCam OSL uses this system to make the camera itself a shader, modifying how rays are projected into the 3D scene. This allows, for example, a chromatic aberration shader to refract light in the ray-tracing step, rather than faking it afterwards in compositing. It also means depth-of-field and motion blur remain physically consistent because they occur at the render stage.
Limitations and requirements
BagaCam OSL currently works only in Cycles. Eevee and Eevee Next do not support OSL camera shaders. GPU OSL rendering is limited to single-GPU setups, and CPU rendering remains the most stable mode for complex OSL operations. The add-on targets Blender 5.0 and later. Pricing details are listed on the Superhive product page. It’s 12 USD.
Why this matters
Integrating optical simulation at the camera stage allows for physically plausible renders without relying on external compositing. For production workflows requiring realistic lenses or cinematic depth, BagaCam OSL offers a direct, render-level alternative to Nuke or After Effects lens filters. Artists working on VFX, archviz, or animation projects can now match real camera characteristics within Blender’s render itself, with fewer steps between shot design and final comp.
As with any new tool, it should be tested on production scenes before adoption, especially when combining OSL with complex shading networks.
