How to Add 3D Model in Real Image by Tihomir Blajev, Bulgaria

Hello Readers, I’m very happy to create this tutorial and sharing my knowledge with you.

First of all I’d like to share that I’d rather concentrate on the presentation, toning and compositing, not so much on the modeling, because you could find online a lot of info which will teach you how to do it. Also the car model and brand is quite popular, so there are plenty of drawings and images related to it.

For starters first comes the lightning and placing the 3D model in the scene. If you want to insert a 3D model into an existing photo, you’d need to find a suitable photo for it. I personally found mine in Google search. Once I found it, next is to adjust the 3D model according to the existing photo. For this purpose there are 2 popular ways in the 3ds Max: camera match or to adjust the picture manually. I chose the second one, but you can choose the first one too: you would need at least 5 points and camera points of the model for proper positioning of the camera. After a short adjustment in perspective view and then use the orbit tool I achieved the desired position of the 3d object in the scene and proceeded to illuminate the scene.

The second important thing is to capture the shadows of the 3d object since they will give you the right feel, volume and correct perception in a 3d scene.

The ground was not rendered as part of the scene, it was treated as a matte object and only visible for reflections. My background image was converted to HDRI and adjusted in Photoshop for the reflections override. In this case I used the plane with marked boxes Matte object in VRay properties menu object itself; of course the object must be properly positioned against the car and in the correct perspective.

You need to select an appropriate texture for this plane and set the parameters itself VrayMtl. In this case I choose the texture of Asphalt with a suitable scale; here are settings for the VRayMtl.

Final position of the 3d object, in our case Audi:

Lighting is pretty standard, common and easy in this case, I used VRay sun and two VRayLight, Vray HDRI in the environment slot and in render slot, try to make the nice reflection, because sometimes bad reflections can kill the realism.

Range and the camera are standard but as you can see I reduced the intensity of the sun. Little trick to use the correct color of light depends on the background image. Here are the settings for the stage lighting.