Brecht Van Lommel
Software Engineer at Blender
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrecht Van Lommel is a software engineer with 15 years of deep expertise in 3D rendering, shading, lighting and animation, best known as the lead developer of Blender’s Cycles renderer. He has driven production-grade renderer features across CPU and GPU, volume rendering, sampling and interactive performance from his work at Blender and as lead developer on Arnold at Solid Angle/Autodesk. A pragmatic systems hacker, Brecht routinely improves compiler, build and cross-platform robustness—contributions visible in projects like OpenShadingLanguage, OpenImageIO and the widely used Gitea backend. Based in Amsterdam, he bridges research-quality graphics algorithms with hands-on engineering and production workflows, often collaborating directly with artists to solve real production problems. Colleagues rely on him for both architectural leadership and the low-level fixes that make complex rendering systems reliable in practice.
15 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Computer Science, Master in IT - Multimedia, Computer Science, Master in IT - Multimedia at Universiteit HasseltASO, Latin - Mathematics, ASO, Latin - Mathematics at KJ Hasselt
English, Dutch, French
Github Skills (27)
git10
filesystem10
c-language10
freebsd10
llvm10
windows10
opensl10
gitea10
go10
cplus10
git-pull10
file-handling10
golang10
pullrequest10
issue-tracking10
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenShadingLanguage
May 2012 - Apr 2022
Advanced shading language for production GI renderers
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Build Engineer
Back-end Developer & Build EngineerContributions:32 reviews, 57 commits, 20 PRs in 10 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Brecht's primary contributions focused on improving the Open Shading Language (OSL) compiler and execution environment. They addressed issues related to static linking, preprocessor behavior, and the handling of integer literals, which improved the overall stability and reliability of the OSL compiler. Furthermore, they enhanced the functionality of the shading system by adding support for loading shaders from memory buffers and integrating new color spaces. Finally, the user introduced build system improvements, including support for static LLVM linking, specifying LLVM versions, and adding a BUILDSTATIC option.
vfxshadingshaderscomputer-graphicsc-plus-plus
AcademySoftwareFoundation/OpenImageIO
Feb 2011 - Jan 2023
Reading, writing, and processing images in a wide variety of file formats, using a format-agnostic API, aimed at VFX applications.
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 30 commits, 16 PRs in 12 years
Contributions summary:Brecht primarily contributed to the codebase by addressing platform-specific build issues and adding missing mathematical functions. They focused on resolving build problems related to Windows and FreeBSD, including the use of appropriate atomic operations and platform-specific math functions. Furthermore, they made significant improvements to the file system handling of UTF-8 file paths on Windows, including wrapper functions and modifications to various plugins, demonstrating a strong focus on cross-platform compatibility and robustness.
apivfximageagnosticc-plus-plus
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