Okay, how to composite CG elements into the real world:

First setup your HDR image in the world settings so that it shows up as the background in your view (explained above in older post):

 

This is the Rendered view, with perspective view.

Place your object in the scene (if it isn't already) and add a plane, make sure it's below the object so that it becomes the floor. The plane must be larger than the object and it should be placed in its own layer, seperate from the main object.

I placed the plane on Layer 11 and the main object on Layer 1. This plane will be creating the shadows.

Next step is to try and align the view with the object so that the angle is matched.

It's easier to align the object to the view when you use Render view.

Then comes the setup of the Render layers, this is why you separated the object from the plane.

Go to the Render Panel

And scroll down to the Layers

Blender already has 1 layer by default called ** Render layer**. We'll rename this to something more meaningful like ** Object** by typing into the ** Name:** field. This layer should only render the object, nothing else. Make sure nothing else but the layer that has the object is selected in the layer, in my case, it's ** layer 1**.

Click the + button next to the Object layer to add another and rename this Render Layer to Shadow.

Choose the layer that the plane is on, for me it's layer 11.

An extra setting for the Shadow Render layer is to check the AO option, it's found below the layers

Then scroll up a little until you see a category labelled film

Check the ** Transparent** option

Once you do this it disables the background from being seen in the render. This is correct for the object and shadow as we don't want the background to be merged with the render but we still need the background on its own layer. The problem is that the transparent option is a general setting, not specific to a Render layer, which means it's either on for all layers or off for all layers. A work around is to add a new scene, so that we get independant render settings but remain in the same scene.

Choose Link Objects to keep the same scene that you currently have.

Now in the render settings you can uncheck the ** Transparent** option in the ** film** category so that the background can be rendered. And then we'll need to add another ** Render Layer** for this scene. I called it ** Background** and chose any blank layer (meaning a layer without objects) because the background is visible in all layers

![Background layer](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15049450/Images/Forums/Background%20Layer.jpg "Background layer")

You can delete the other Render layers with the - button, it won't affect the other scene.

Switch from Scene.001 to Scene. Thats all you need to do for the scene