Currently my thoughts are:

People:

A. Clipped Images.
Use really nice clipped images, turned into face-me billboards. Being careful to find images that have 'neutral light' on them.
Pros: no photoshop time
Cons: flat appearance, doesn't work from birds-eye, time consuming to build these.

B. Low-poly people with textures.
Pros: no photoshop time, works from birds-eye, true depth
Cons: doesn't work up close, hard/expensive to find a large number of good ones.

C. High-poly people with textures.(does this exist for SU?)
Pros: no photoshop time, works from birds-eye, true depth
Cons: doesn't work up close, hard/expensive to find a large number of good ones, slows computer

D. Place holder billboards, photoshop people on top of place holder
Pros: easy to add large variety of people images
Cons: Post process time, lighting may not look right.

Trees:

A. Clipped Images.
Use really nice clipped images, turned into face-me billboards.Use really nice clipped images, turned into face-me billboards. Being careful to find

images that have 'neutral light' on them.

Pros: no photoshop time
Cons: flat appearance, doesn't work from birds-eye, time consuming to build these.

B. High-poly Trees
Pros: no photoshop time, works from birds-eye, true depth
Cons: doesn't work up close, hard/expensive to find a large number of good ones, slows computer, very hard to find range of species, very few look organic and realistic

C. Mid-poly Trees with post process.
Use Mid-poly trees to accomplish depth and shadow. In photoshop, overlay real images on top of mid-poly trees.
Pros: Realistic (?)
Cons: Lots of post process time, hard to accomplish with a grove of trees

ThomThom,

I'm sure you are aware, but http://www.turbosquid.com/ has some nice bundles. I have purchased a couple for offices in the past.

Is there a way to 'bake' in the shadows (this can be done in 3ds max)? That way I could get the shadows from 3d trees on one layer, then do the final render with image billboards.

Thanks for the LowPoly Man (sounds like a blues song), I will have to check that in a VRAY rendering tonight at various distances, eye level, etc.

What do you guys do for placing billboards?

A. create cut-out components out of images and place them in sketchup, then render

B. Use photoshop to paste images post process. If so, how do get them scaled correctly and how do you add shadows.

Or is there some composite way? I have tried using a 3D tree then overlaying an image on top of it post-process. That way I get the depth and shadows in my final illustration. However, to that I have to set up an alpha channel for the tree, etc. etc...very time consuming.

I'm really pulling my hair out trying to figure out the best way to handle entourage. I have tried post process only with photshop. I have tried photo billboards in the model. Neither is working well. Nothing ruins an illustration (and is easy to spot) than bad people and trees.

So my question is: what is everyone's approach to people and trees?

Thanks in advance,
Nathan

Today I upgraded my integrated video card to a dedicated one (nvidia 9400gt, 1GB). I noticed a remarkable improvement in navigating models, however the VRAY rendering times remained the same.

Am I correct to assume that the VRAY rendering engine only taps the processor? Do I have something setup up incorrectly?

Thanks in advance.