C4D and VRAY - lighting the scene with one HDRI

There is one realy genial trick to light your whole scene with one HDRI image. Maybe if you tried this in the past, you got some similar result:

The reflections are good, lightning is somehow usable, but the shadows are almost unvisible. Event if they are turned on in Vray light settings.

The trick is, you need to change color profile of HDRI.

Of course, if want to add HDRI into Vray scene, you need light type "area" with the "VrayLight" tag. Next you have to turn on shadows in "Common" tab, change the type to "Dome" in "Area light" tab and add HDRI image from disk or C4D library via drag and drop.

Clicking on added HDRI will get you to bitmap shader settings, where you need to change "Color profile" to sRGB:

If you need brighter light, you can also change exposure here. To get even better shadows, you need to return to light tag and increase "Subdivisions" in "Area light" tab. Around 150 looks great a wont consume so much render time as expected.

This way you will get realy realistic shadows, reflections and partial AO and GI.

This technique is not usable for all HDRIs. Some work with filter shader (added over HDRI), where you need decrease gamma. And with some wont help even that. Problematic images are without sun (of course) and also some with photografic lens effects around the sun. Best results I got from VHDRI type.

lighting the scene with one HDRI - part 2