How to Import Furniture and Entourage in SketchUp for Complete Scene Finalization

Enhancing the Scene with Furniture and Entourage in SketchUp

Learn how to add finishing touches to your 3D modeling project in SketchUp by importing furniture from the 3D warehouse, customizing materiality, adding detailed landscaping, and populating the scene with people. This article offers step-by-step instructions on how to enhance the realism of your model and finalize your design for export.

Key Insights

  • SketchUp's 3D warehouse offers a broad selection of furniture in both low and high poly versions that can be imported directly into your model, allowing for a more detailed and realistic view of the space.
  • Customizing materiality in SketchUp allows for greater flexibility and precision in the design process. In this case, the user modified the colors and textures of the furniture to match the overall aesthetic of the model.
  • Adding entourage, which includes components like people and detailed landscaping, is a crucial final step to give the model a lived-in and realistic feel. SketchUp offers a variety of 2D and 3D people, as well as detailed landscaping options to enhance the overall design.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

Welcome back! All right, in this video we are going to import some final furniture from the 3D warehouse and some entourage and really finalize our scene before we create our exterior exports. If you look in our component dialog box, there is no option for furniture. We will need to go into this 3D SketchUp warehouse.

And if we type SketchUp and go into catalogs, and you can see that there's SketchUp licensed products. We click the SketchUp logo right here. This opens up on the website all the different types of things that they have.

But let's type in outdoor furniture. And under collections, you can see that SketchUp has low poly and high poly versions. This is the high poly.

And let's go download one of these tables. Feel free to choose your own. I'm going to choose this square table set detailed.

I want to download this directly into my SketchUp model. I can then start placing these around in my patio by clicking it once. Then in my end model, I can start searching for this square table set.

Learn SketchUp

  • Nationally accredited
  • Create your own portfolio
  • Free student software
  • Learn at your convenience
  • Authorized Autodesk training center

Learn More

And I can place this periodically in different locations on the site. Really nice kind of outdoor dining area. Maybe I'll place one underneath the trellis.

Maybe I'll place one more. And then maybe one more over here. Nice little kind of corner.

Now that we've placed in a lot of these tables, let's see if we can modify some of the materiality of this. I don't like this brown color and this green. Let's change this tabletop to maybe a concrete tabletop with a black metal base and metal frame on these chairs with some wood slats.

We already have those materials in our model that we can use, we can pull from. So let's double click on this component. Let's double click onto this table.

And let's triple click into this. And let's paint this material. And let's go into our end model tab.

And let's find a concrete texture. We have polished concrete old, blacktop, concrete aggregate smoke, floor concrete. Let's create a new material.

Let's go into our asphalt and concrete and we'll click this polished concrete new. And we'll paint here. We will duplicate this and we will call this tabletop concrete.

Maybe make this a little bit darker. Okay. And then paint.

Now let's paint the base. Double click into that. And let's go into base plate metal.

Let's paint the same metal that we have for our base plates. And now let's do the same thing for the chairs. Paint this trim the same base plate metal.

And then this wood slats. We'll paint it the same wood that we have on the door wood grain. Excellent.

Now we have a nice arrangement of furniture that fits very well in our scene. Let's go ahead and do a selection window. So select these tables and deselect the pergola.

And right click make group. And we'll add these under furniture. We can also add some detailed landscaping.

Maybe some plants on these on these tables. If we double click into here we can go into our components. And if you go into under landscape plants low poly.

Actually let's go under plants high poly. We can see that we have ornamentals 3D. Let's open up this.

And here we have some nice potted plants that we can put on various tabletops. Let's uh download this potted flower plot. Maybe put one on here and we'll go back into our in model.

And we'll find where that flower is at. It is called potted plant. We'll place it on a on a few just randomly selected tables.

No meaning just just kind of spread it around add some color. Some beauty to this to this space. We'll add one more on this one.

And let's go add maybe a few hanging hanging plants on this on this trellis. We'll double click into this trellis. We'll go into our landscape plants high poly ornamentals.

We'll get this spider hanging basket. Maybe we'll put that one. You can see it's coming in upside down.

We'll put it in we'll right click flip along blue. And then we will move maybe we'll put it right in right there. And maybe we'll we'll copy it over and we'll do another one right here.

Another one right here. And it looks really nice. And the final thing is let's add some people and really populate this scene.

If we go into our component dialog box into people and then we go into people 2D. There is a plethora of individuals. We can do the silhouette route or we can scroll down to get more people that look that have you know various characteristics.

We can go ahead and you know pick and choose different individuals that we want. We'll go back into that that same we go back into the 3D warehouse. It'll open up that same folder we were just at and scroll down to some more people that kind of fit the scene the best.

Walking around a park kind of put them in in various positions around. I'm thinking I maybe want to put in like you know eight or nine eight or nine people. And we'll probably move these things around for what's best fits our scene.

One great thing about Sketchup is they've constantly done a great job of updating their entourage people in here and it's really gives it a nice look and feel and consistency. I think we need a few more back on this end. Almost there.

These are face me components so when you're over around they'll constantly face you. If you put one in a chair that's sitting down they won't quite read or work very well. We'll do one more of these 2D people.

We'll do this group of women talking right here. Right over here. And then Sketchup also has 3D people which these are kind of 3D models of people that we can apply the url materials to.

Some are sitting or standing so if you want to add in a seated person you know these are not like the best quality of people but you know that is an option if that's something that you desire. Especially for silhouettes right like if you wanted to keep someone that when you're orbited around and look good and so say for example I wanted him to be more like a silhouette black color then when you orbit around you'll constantly get that seated approach. So that's a nice kind of design feature.

I'll delete this because I don't need that in my model. I will select the people that I added and I want to make sure that I put them under entourage. We're going to turn them on and off as needed.

Let's go ahead and clean up our tags because certain components that we bring in also brings in individual tags. I can see that I have these layer 1s. I'm not sure where these belong to so I can select these two.

Also this the default layer I can right click delete tags. I don't want to delete all the entities on those just move those to the untagged layer. Let's go add some materiality to our picnic table or our carousel.

Let's add a concrete floor to this. Let's go into our materials. Let's go to our end model.

Let's go and find concrete old. You know you can then maybe paint this more of that kind of dark metal color and we can paint the the roof. We can kind of I'm looking at colors that I have in the model already that we can kind of modify.

You can also feel free to choose your own materials something like that. Give a little more more life and color to it. We will add some some wood to our sign in the front.

Maybe our same concrete base. Let's do a selection window so we're only selecting this. We'll make this a group.

We'll select this and make this a group. We'll select this component this this group CTRL A h to unhide. We'll select this concrete and then we'll also select the the ground cover.

I'll paint that and we'll select the the top concrete here and then we'll we'll select this vertical post and this vertical post and we'll paint that. We'll do our eyedropper tool and we'll eyedrop our column which has our vertical wood grain and we'll paint that with the vertical wood grain. Paint this with our vertical wood grain.

We'll select this and then we'll do us a a minus subtract selection window so we don't select the inverse just the outside and we'll and then we'll paint the horizontal wood which is our wood beam like that and now we can paint this this backdrop you know maybe a gray color or something else maybe a little bit different something like that. There we go and there we have our nice complete community park and in the next final couple videos we will create some exports play with the scenes and the styles and adjust our our um our different scene settings to toggle on and off various views or or layer states and uh i will see you in the next video

photo of Derek McFarland

Derek McFarland

SketchUp Pro Instructor

Over the course of the last 10 years of my architectural experience and training, Derek has developed a very strong set of skills and talents towards architecture, design and visualization. Derek grew up in an architectural family with his father owning his own practice in custom home design. Throughout the years, Derek has had the opportunity to work and be involved at his father's architecture office, dealing with clients, visiting job sites, and contributing in design and production works. Recently, Derek has built up an incredible resume of architecture experiences working at firms such as HOK in San Francisco, GENSLER in Los Angeles, and RNT, ALTEVERS Associated, HMC, and currently as the lead designer at FPBA in San Diego. Derek has specialized in the realm of architectural design and digital design.

  • SketchUp Pro
More articles by Derek McFarland

How to Learn SketchUp

Master SketchUp for 3D modeling, architectural visualization, and design projects.

Yelp Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Instagram