@Juraj, you may know better than me, how hard is to hear same question hundred times :D
@Yagi, I will provide following tips for you which might be helpful. There is no right answer, since every scene or situation requires new approach.
– hardwork and a lot of testing. a lot. really.
– reference study. Thats the key to succes in my case. First of all, you must know how shadows/light look in different situations. Only after you will be able to replicate it.
– I noticed that different hdri's behave diffrent in each scene. So you have to choose right one, or even modify them. Peter has really good ones, considering prices also.
– 32bit workflow
– VFB+ comes incredibly handful in tonemapping.
– sometimes you have to go extreme with corona tonemapping settings. And it works!
I think I will write a post in my blog this week about lighting setup in this project, so you may follow it.
By the way, I did not use any additional lights in this project. But sometimes I use.