OSL Converter

Extract text from Open Shading Language files (OSL)

Select File
Drop or upload your .OSL file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your OSL file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your OSL file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert OSL to another file type

To convert OSL shader files to another format, you need Blender or other 3D software.

Convert a file to OSL

To convert other file formats to the "Shader Definition File" file type, you need software like Blender or a similar tool.

About OSL files

The .OSL extension most frequently denotes a shader source file written in the Open Shading Language, a standard developed by Sony Pictures Imageworks for high-end visual effects. These files describe how surfaces react to light in advanced renderers like Blender, Arnold, and OctaneRender.

The main issue with OSL files is that they are technically plain text source code, not executable binaries. To be used by a rendering engine, they must often be compiled into .OSO (object) files. Users frequently find themselves needing to "convert" these files simply to verify syntax or make them readable by a specific version of a 3D suite. Additionally, because they are code, opening them in a standard image viewer yields nothing; they generate images, they are not images themselves.

A secondary, less common use (approx. 20% of files) is as a serialized data file generated by the Microsoft .NET Framework. These are binary files created using the BinaryFormatter, often containing saved application states or object data. These are notoriously difficult to work with because they are opaque binary blobs and the BinaryFormatter class has been flagged for severe security risks.

Conversion Recommendations:

For 3D Rendering: Compile .OSL to .OSO using a command-line tool like oslc or internally within Blender.
For Editing: Convert to TXT or open directly in a code editor like Visual Studio Code to modify the shader logic.
For .NET Data: If the file is binary (unreadable text), it requires deserialization to JSON or XML using custom .NET scripts to retrieve the stored data.

Convert.Guru analyzes your OSL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted XFR, IFP and PHS files.

FAQ

If you want to convert OSL file to , you can use Blender or similar software from the "3D Shader Source Code" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert files to OSL, try Blender or another comparable tool in the "3D Shader Source Code" category.

The OSL Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our OSL converter.