After we have the locations selected and all objects for the scene in place, you should go to the site and see if there are any pictures that can be used for backdrops. If there are windows, take shots from where the picture will be created capturing what will be seen out the windows. Also, if you have any material samples of the items being used, scan these in and use them for the materials in the scene. You again will need either PhotoShop or Painter to do some magic on the background image to edit out unwanted elements and for creating the tiled images for the materials.
Depending on the scene, you may also want to populate it with human forms. This can be done in several ways. One of the most fun ways is to use Fractal Designs' Poser 2.0. This will create men, women, or children using inverse kinetics to move the body into the shape you want, and they come in several different clothed styles. The problem with them is that they do look computer generated. This is ok if the people will not be right up front in the scene. You can also create AVI files of them moving and insert this into your AVI file. Another is simply to purchase individual models from one of the many model stores. The problem with this is that you are only buying 1 model in 1 position. Purchase about 3 models, and you've paid for Poser. Personally, I'd go with Poser instead. Lastly you can take photos of people and place the photos into the scene. This can be done either before or after the image is rendered. Afterwards you have the problem though of faking in the shadows from the person. Before and you have the problem of how to insert the bitmap into the image. One way is by having the picture of the person be incorporated into the background image. Another is to simply create a series of 3D faces of a region that is in the shape of the person's picture and then use the picture as the material for the shape. This works only from one angle. If you are making an AVI, you need to rotate the region to always face the camera or you will notice the person is only a flat surface. Here's a simple trick for doing similar things with simpler items: Try taking a rectangular surface. Array this around its midpoint so you have a pinwheel. Apply to the surfaces created a bitmap of a column, plant, tree, etc, and you can move around it and it will always appear to be looking at you without having to turn it or create a complicated geometry to define it. It's a simple trick that works so long as you don't notice the shadow is messed up. If you need real plants with shadow, the best thing on the market that I've seen is Accurender where you actually pick different trees, plants and groundcover, but you can also modify existing species of plants or create your own, as well as pick what season the plant is in. Recently on a 4000x3000-pixel image we placed several trees, plants and groundcover in the image. After rendering on Accurender there was so much detail in the plants, you could make out every turn in each leaf on the oak trees. For the record this image took about 60 hours to render on a PP 200 with 128megs of RAM. We have since upgraded our machines in an effort to decrease this time.
