Having set up your scene, your choice of entourage is now the most important decision you will have to make in the visualization process. Clever use of the entourage will frame the picture, enhance it, and distract the viewer from the details that you don't want them to see. More than this, choosing the right kind of entourage can increase or reduce the render time by an order of magnitude.

Choosing your final entourage will be covered in more detail in Chapter 6, Entourage the SketchUp Way, and you really don't want to have to worry about specifics until then. Choices on what trees to use, whether they will be 3D or 2D, downloaded from a website or created yourself will all be decided later, and we will discover together what the best options for creating great looking architectural renders are. However, for now, what you need the most, is creative flexibility.