I published a collection of my light match .blend files, as was discussed during the class. You're welcome to reference those if you'd like. Also here's links to the reels 
shiennar put together:
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (Oct 31, 2018): Class is officially over! Please check the closing post and don't forget to fill out the questionnaire 🙇🏻♂️
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (Oct 9, 2018): Grades for week 1 homework are recorded. Feel free to keep an eye on this spreadsheet (BC4-1810 tab at the bottom) throughout the month. Please let me know if I miss anything!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (Oct 3, 2018): 4 mighty Citizens have heeded the call to become Volunteer Assistants (VA's). They are: 
silentheart00, 
thecabbagedetective, 
csehz, and 
galledark. This means that between the 5 of us, there should always be a helpful presence both in this homepage thread and your individual homework threads throughout the month. Thank you VA's!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (Oct 1, 2018): Class is officially in session! Check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and I'll see you tomorrow at the first Live Event! 💡
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Shading & Lighting with Blender! The art of shading and lighting your Blender scenes and models can make or break your renders. It's a very important - even enlightening - skill to develop as a 3D artist.
This "Class" format invites all Citizen members to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from October 1st - Oct 30th.
Abstract: There are some core concepts to lighting and shading (S&L) that need to be understood first. Things like global illumination, render engines, shaders, materials, and node networks some of the things we will be over-viewing this first week. I
Goal of the Week: Familiarize (or re-familiarize) ourselves with core S&L concepts.
Pre-recorded course to watch:
Week 1 Live Event (Remember to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: The Eevee render engine is the latest and greatest rendering tech in Blender and we're going to stretch its legs for week 2. The subject is going to be a sports car, but any vehicle will do. After all many of us spent this past June modeling vehicles and we're eager to get them lit and pretty!
Some topics we'll cover along the way include materials like car paint, rubber, metal, and leather along with HDRI environment lighting.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Character lighting is a very intentional art and how to do it well is often a mystery. This week we'll look at how to develop striking character renders, build simple materials that accentuate your model, and even the concept "painting" you character with light for surreal effects.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: Arch viz rendering is often a coveted skillset among lighten enthusiasts. This week we're looking at lighting interior architecture for realism, featuring natural outdoor light from windows and artificial light from light fixtures. We'll also explore creating the necessary materials for our interior.
Pre-recorded course to watch:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Shading & Lighting with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask Kent and fellow participants questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, Kent will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of October to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication and participation is reserved for Citizens.
I just noticed that one of my favourite tutorial makers has posted a video on setting up effective rim light. He also shows how to use the "Track To" constraint, which has helped me a lot when positioning lights in my latest project. In case anyone is interested, here is the video.
yyukinoh1989 Huh. Well maybe you should uninstall and reinstall 2.7. If that doesn't work, then I have no more options for you to try.
silentheart00 somehow it does work with 2.8 so guess I'll stick with that. I posted the results
yyukinoh1989 That's good to hear, but it'd be good to get the stable version of Blender (2.7) working, too. But hey, you found a workaround so far, and sometimes that's what you need to do until you solve the problem.
shiennar I like tutor4u! The very first things I did in Blender were his videos, because they were so easy to follow along with while I was still learning the interface, and he does a good job of making tutorials accessible, but still having a pretty thorough scope of what Blender can do. I always enjoy recognizing his stuff in gallery posts here.
llobos Absolutely! It's a bit too late to submit for week 1 homework but you're more than welcome to join for the other 3 weeks!
ssmurfmier1985 damn it sure does that one car too with the blue neon lights :D gonna be fun.
for today i gonna call it a day i think . at least for working in overal . just gonna cook and clean and watch blender class.
i do wonder if we also gonna intent to use the pumpkin for the contest for our class last week is it allowed to also ask questions about that in here ? or not ? and can we post those updates also in the class tread with quesitons or is it better to keep that in the pumpkin topic ? exept the final render then of course .
question does a texture map always have to be grey and black image or if you take a collored picture does that work too ?
@theluthier Question: in week 3 I want to kill two birds with one stone (or however that expression goes in English), I want to shade/light/composit the pumpkin character I'm working on for the Epic Pumpkin Contest.
Is that okay? Since you're one of the judges I can imagine it might not be allowed..
You can always just give me my grade and not comment on my pumpkin, only comment on the light match, I don't mind 😉 Knowing the awesome community here I will get plenty of useful feedback 😎
I'll be doing it in eevee by the way, just for kicks 😬
@theluthier on the main page of the spreadsheet with all the graphs, in the total xp one, it says that I never earned any xp ☹️ No blue column by my name.. bug?
ssmurfmier1985 Love the inspiration you posted! That car looks amazing.
I talked to Wes about the contest and the more we think about me being a judge, the more unfair it feels to give specific feedback about your pumpkin project(s). However I am in favor of you being able to submit the pumpkin as homework. Like you suggested, I'll give you a grade but not mention the pumpkin specifically. I will on the light match though. Therefore week 3's grade would be an average between both assignments and you wouldn't have specific feedback on the pumpkin.
That's a good compromise imo.
Grades for week 1 homework are recorded. Feel free to keep an eye on this spreadsheet throughout the month. Please let me know if I miss anything!
ALSO if you're entering the Pumpkin Contest and want to submit your pumpkin project for week 3 as your character render, you can do that. However as a judge of the contest it would be unfair for me to give specific feedback about your project; feedback that submitters outside this class won't have. So I will average your grade between your pumpkin "character" and your light match, providing feedback to the light match as usual, but not for the pumpkin character. #compromise #2birds1stone
@theluthier Um, Kent, that appears to be your DVD collection lol. Good to hear about the pumpkins though, was thinking about submitting and as you said that'd be unfair as hell, so thanks for the compromise.
edit: Seems the update on the main post is fine, just that comment, so don't mind me, my bad
Whoops, that's a side project of digitizing my physical movie collection. I've updated the proper link 😅