Using HDR Images for 3D Lighting in Maya

Maya 2012, Nuke 6.3v1, Photoshop CS5, PTGui v9.0

This tutorial is a guide to using HDR panoramic images for lighting with Maya and mental ray. Throughout the tutorial, we'll cover all of the hidden details that are needed to use HDR imagery for lighting in Maya. We'll start 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 images are clearly laid out, we will take a look at how you can create your own HDR images at home using a DSLR camera, tripod, nodal head and software. Lastly, we'll 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.