3d on liveaction footage

[Patrick]

I cruised through the 3dtotal tut's and couldn't find any
on how to impose 3d on to recorded movie's, Does
anyone know where to find this stuff. i've done a little bit of it
just animating a robotic arm on my desk moving a ball around,
with some ... ok shadows. I've also googled and looked around,
the web, alot of places sold HOWTO dvd's and such but i'm
full time uni student and after text books, guild fee's etc, i'm looking
for somthing a little free'r does anyone know where, or could
write a small tut, lol i know thats alot to ask, but the little i've done,
was alot of fun.

[MonteCristo]

If you are using Max, I'm pretty sure it comes with tutorials on this as standard.

I think the usual way is to use software such as Adobe After Effects. You render your 3d out as TGA's with Alpha maps and do the compositing in there.