The invention pertains to a method for realistic visualization of a 3D virtual dental model (1) in a 2D image (20) of a face, the method comprising estimating or assuming a lighting situation in the image of the face, determining boundaries of an inner mouth region in the image, computing, based on the boundaries of the inner mouth region, on a 3D face geometry and on the lighting situation, a shadowing in the inner mouth region, computing a lighting of the dental model (1) based at least on the computed shadowing, and visualizing the dental model (1) and the 2D image (20), wherein at least the inner mouth region in the image is overlaid with a visualization (21) of the dental model having the computed lighting.
