"Håkan 'Zap' Andersson official title at mental images is 'Shader Wizard', and is the author of many of the shaders shipping with mental ray, including the subsurface, paint, architectural and production shader libraries.
From his youth, when he hand-built is first graphics card to his first computer he has had an avid interest in visual effects and computer graphics, which persists to this day. He sees no border between work and pleasure, as long as the work is in CG...."
Professor Hakan 'Zap' Andersson has been working as "Shader Wizard" at mental images since 2004 and is the author of numerous mental ray shaders, such as the subsurface/skin shaders, the car paint shader, as well as the architectural and production shader libraries. Originally educated as an Engineer in Electronics, Zap's passion for computer graphics caused his graduation year "special project" to be an actual hand-built and hand-wired graphics card, for which he wrote his first ray tracer. Today Zap spends his days (and nights) writing shaders, documentation and tutorials for mental ray, and sometimes makes presentations at user events and conventions, as well as maintains a mental ray tips blog mentalraytips.blogspot.com.
