Rod Bogart, aka RGB, (the best initials in the biz) grew up in Colorado. His dad worked at IBM and occasionally brought computers home. Computer Science was a natural pursuit and Rod went on to earn his BS and MS degrees. After graduating he spent some time running a visualization lab on the University of Michigan campus. He later worked at PDI in Hollywood where he helped develop procedurally based image processing tools to automate wire removal and the removal of most anything from any shot. He joined the ILM R&D group in 1995 and helped develop the Open EXR standard with Florian Kainz, Drew Hess, and Piotr Stanczyk which went on to win a Scientific and Technical Achievement Academy Award. Years later at Pixar he developed their color science pipeline. Rod then moved to NYC where he worked for HBO on their HDR tools and workflows. Today he is the senior software engineer on the virtual production team at Epic. Heβs been at ground zero of virtually every major development in the business for the last 30 years.
Rod is one of the most kind and intelligent people I've ever worked with. He would make an excellent teacher as he has an uncanny ability to take highly complex technical concepts and explain them in terms anyone can follow and understand. It was great fun to reconnect with him and hear his story.