Key Shot for dummies

[waters]

The instructional material for KeyShot is very thin, to say the least. One question is about using 360 degree panoramas for the background. I am an accomplished 360 panorama shooter / creator and would be interested in incorporating some of my panoramas into a scene. From what little I understand, I need a back plate to use for lighting / shadows, but there is no explanation that I can find explaining the relationship.

[JeffM]

You use spherical HDR images for lighting/shadows/reflections. Backplates serve as a nice clean background for your scene and are independent of the HDRI environment. If you're creating 32 bit HDR images when doing panoramas then you'll be able to bring those in as environments in KeyShot.

[waters]

Assuming I create a panorama with 32 bit depth, what is the process for bringing it into KeyShot as an environment? This is where the lack of documentation is problematic. If 32 bit is the requirement I am puzzled at why the need for a gamut that is beyond any monitors? I have made plenty of HDR panoramas, but there is always a trade off between what is possible and what is realistic, with far too many cartoonish " HDR " images, devoid of proper shadows and highlights. Some of the HDR  spherical environments in KeyShot don't look any better than ones I have done.