I very rarely need to do any visualizations or advanced renderings (mostly interior), but my client asked if he could see a picture of his new reception desk in the space it’s designed for, naturally I replied “OF COURSE!”. I snapped a photo of the entrance hall. So I now have the desk modelled in rhino and a photo of the hall. What next? I’m looking for a pretty quick and dirty way to do this, nothing fancy. I’m guessing software might be a limitation because I’m using Rhino for mac which has very poor rendering capabilities (sans background images) and photoshop.
Any ideas?
Typically when I do “in place” shots I’ll import the photo as my background image in the tool and try to eyeball the model into place in the perspective view - keeping in mind the focal length and vanishing point of your shot.
If you want to get really fancy you can also generate an HDR of the environment so that your model is properly lit, but thats usually easy enough to fake.
Once I have the image rendered I’ll bring it into photoshop, add a little fake depth of field (if necessary) and some noise to try and get the grain of the image consistent, and tweak anything on the 3D that doesn’t quite line up. Usually easy to composite your shadow in Photoshop as well.
If you can get the focal length of your camera lens, and drop that into the rendering program. That can help with matching the perspective. But other than that, as Cyberdemon says.
In Rhino the command to place your base image behind your model is called Wallpaper, it may be a setting in your viewport dialog. This anchors the image behind and allows you to rotate the model and adjust the position. Then render the model with an alpha channel and save as png which keeps the transparency. Open up in Photoshop and tweak away with layers as described above.
If you are using FlamingoNXT with Rhino then use the base image as the HDR environment. You will have to import the original camera capture into Photoshop and change to 32 bit depth Mode and save as HDR file type. This will give the color reflections of your model a similar feeling and warmth as your reference image.
Not for one off, but if you do often, nothing beats a 3d connexion space pilot type device for matching the rotation and angle of the model to an image.
I’d download the trial version of keyshot. Set your pic as the background, load in your rhino model, match the “camera” settings to your digital camera setting for the photo (ie match focal length etc) and away you go. From memory there is an office HDR in the stndard environments which will also help to add realism to your image.