Somehow and someway my set of Maya and Mental Ray classes have shown up online at the Community Video section of the beloved Internet Archive dot org.  This is a great resource for all things web and education, so I will post details here so people can enjoy.  The videos are broken into roughly 10 minute lessons, and as a whole they cover Linear Color Workflow, Creating Panoramic HDR’s for IBL, and using 32-bit EXR images for lighting.  They offer the videos in a variety of formats for download and or streaming, so have at it for free.

https://archive.org/details/JonTojek

This tutorial covers all the hidden details that are needed to use HDR imagery for lighting in Maya.  Beginning with physically based lighting, world scene scale, color management, proper render preview, and verification of valid floating point linear color images.  Once the rules for using HDR’s are clearly laid out the lessons will then cover how to make your own HDR images at home using a DSLR camera, tripod, nodal head, and software.  Lastly we will go over examples of using and editing these images for a variety of indoor and outdoor lighting situations, as well as covering light extraction, and making HDR kooks from an HDR photo of a light.