The GUI would be useful, but I haven't tried figuring out how to make a template for Blender Octane yet. I have used it for Cycles, I think the only downside is that there isn't a slider for the blurriness (again, as far as I'm aware. Maybe I missed that).
Hi WIPEXPO, a possible solution is to open the HDRI in Photoshop and use the HDR Toning window to compress it. Here is a fast and exasperated example with the Highlight compression preset:
WIPEXPO wrote:Hi, How to soften hdri texture based shadows?? , I`m using 22EV .hdr.
I'm not shure if that attempt ist what you need, but you can play with the gamma settings of the hdri. Activate the Octane Visible Environment and make a copy of environment texture node in Order to keep the background appearance.
Same Settings Octane Environment and Octane Visible Environment