3D digital art combined with real

Digital 3D renderings combined with real imagery are most useful for exterior architectural scenes. The process involves taking a photograph and then blending an exterior digital 3D scene with it. It requires two skills that are separate to 3D digital rendering skills:- Photography and the ability to frame a non-existent scene. Imagination is the key to this.

Creating an exterior architectural rendering in 3D requires:

Exterior Architectural Digital Art
This is the previously described step although the lighting must be done to match the photograph.

Photography
Without a killed architectural photographer the scene will be a disaster. It takes a completely different skill set to that of normal photographers with more emphasis on time of day, framing, foreground, background, exposure and a complete knowledge of the 3D process.

Compositing
This is where the two images, 3D digital and photographic, are spliced. It is the "montage" in "photomontage". The tool of choice is Adobe Photoshop where we push it's advanced features in masking, cropping and colour correction to the limit.

While the photographs today are taken digitally we still relate to them as non-digital when it comes to combining digital artwork and photography. The digital photograph is still "real" despite it being stored on disc, but it's the artwork itself that is generated digitally and is therefore pure digital.

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