Green Rascal Design

No, I don't mean the show.

Here's a nice little guy I got for free online. If you have a simple model, and you want to go the route of adding 3D people to it, then that's fine. I don't know how to make people in 3ds Max yet, so I can't say how long the artist took to make this guy. Though I'm glad I found him, and he works great for this simple model. I would not, however, add a lot of 3D people. If you have something that needs a couple of main characters, this works. Once you get the feel for how light is reacting with one or two of these types of objects, you can probably get the same results with Photoshop.

Here is a version of the rendering with an additional person. She's not quite as awesome, but the thing is pretty fuzzy so it really isn't that visible. I messed around with the radiosity parameters, and I'm not that happy with it. The point of this image, though, is just to demonstrate adding more people to a rendering. See below where I have added two flat people in photoshop, and I only spent half an hour on this at most.

If I'd really planned this out, I might have picked images of people that weren't so sharp and detailed so that they might match what I already had going on. That's okay. The point is clear. Notice how the space feels with more people in it? It went from being a lonely room last week to some guy admiring a statue, then to a guy and his wife arguing about the statue, and finally to a room where a bunch of people are discussing the statue.

Now is a good time to think about how you plan to populate your models. Collect models or images of people that seem to fit together with each other in addition to your space. How many people use your place on average? What are they doing there? This is your entourage, and just as you'd carefully select friends to hang out with, spend some time selecting  them for your projects! (Certainly spend more time than I have today!)