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How To Add Realistic 3D Objects To Real Life Footage (Blender/After Effects) Tutorial

Tracks live-action footage, matches a Blender 3D object into the shot, and finishes the composite in After Effects. Covers matching lighting and using a shadow catcher so the CG element sits believably in the plate.

Zay Jay · 14 min · Intermediate · VFX · VFX · 2022

What you take away

Use a shadow-catcher pass so a CG object grounds itself in real footage.

Watch it

Filed under

Oscar winners for visual effects

Books on visual effects

Kit for this lesson

Corsair 128GB DDR5 kit — For Unreal, caches and twelve open applications
Intel Core Ultra 9 285K — Quick Sync, which some codecs still love
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X — 16 cores — the sweet spot for a cutting room
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 — The sensible half-price render card
NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada — Workstation card, single slot, 20GB
Apple Mac mini M4 — The cheapest Mac that cuts 4K without complaint

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