Using HDR Images for 3D Lighting in Maya

Jon Tojek

Clearly the Visual Effects lifestyle has been a lifesaver for Jon Tojek. “Why is this, you may ask?” After years of hard work to earn a bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering at UW Madison, his lack of passion for designing CPU’s was replaced with a long rewarding career of filmmaking, teaching, and creating visual effects for Hollywood films and commercials. Starting in the late 90’s demoing Alias Power Animator, he worked for SGI during the birth of Maya, helping west coast film clients in... moretegrate the newest software into their pipelines, as well training, bug testing, and on site support. After some years making commercials, independent short, films (google “Let’s Get Medical”), music videos, and managing artists at post houses in Chicago and Brazil, he began living Los Angeles to be a lighting TD at Sony Pictures Imageworks. This Hollywood work streak continues today after doing lighting, look development, and effects work on Polar Express, Monster House, Happy Feet, 2012, Avatar and Super 8 at a dozen places like ILM, Animal Logic, Hydraulx, Psyop, and Method. In between films jobs there are always more commercials to do which keep Jon busy on national spots for clients like BMW, Lexus, Mercury, NFL, and Transamerica. This list can get much longer and may get boring, but by mixing things up and keeping a hand in training and demoing new software Tojek enjoys a continuing freelance international VFX lifestyle where he can live in Rio de Janeiro, work remotely from the home CG studio, and travel to jobs when called on.