HDRI panoramas for Cinema 4D

Load an HDRI in Cinema 4D 2026 (Standard and Physical)

1. In the object menu bar, click the small arrow at the lower right of the Floor icon and choose Sky to add a Sky object to the scene.
2. Create a new material in the Material Manager, double-click to open the Material Editor, then uncheck Color and Reflectance and enable only Luminance.
3. In the Luminance channel, click the texture slot and load a 32-bit .exr or .hdr file.
4. Drag the material from the Material Manager onto the Sky object in the Object Manager to assign it.
5. In Render Settings, add Global Illumination to the effects list so the Sky object's Luminance channel also lights the scene, not just the background.

Load an HDRI into a Redshift Dome Light

1. Create a Redshift light object and set its Type to Dome in the light's General tab.
2. In the Dome Light's Texture field, load the .exr or .hdr file.
3. Use Intensity for a plain brightness multiplier, or Exposure to adjust brightness in stops, where an increase of 1.0 doubles the light.
4. Rotate the Dome Light object itself in the viewport to turn the HDRI, since the light has no separate rotation field of its own.

Which resolution

A 4096x2048 to 8192x4096 file is enough when the HDRI only lights the scene, since both the Sky object and the Redshift Dome Light resample the texture for GI. Use 16000x8000 or the 20000x10000 files when the sky is directly visible behind the model or in glossy reflections.

Sun and shadows

An unclipped sun disc keeps the sun's true brightness in the file instead of clamping it to white, so the Physical renderer or Redshift can trace a sharp shadow straight from the HDRI. 52 of the outdoor HDRIs on HDRI Hub are unclipped, and none of them need an extra sun light added to the scene.