Entourage — People, Vehicles, and Objects
Every figure you place is a spatial argument. Scale, shadow, and lighting consistency are what make it believable.
Why entourage matters
A rendered space without people has no scale reference and no evidence of use. A single correctly placed and scaled human figure communicates more about how a space works — and how it feels at the human scale — than any material or lighting effect. Entourage is not decoration. Every person, vehicle, and object placed in a scene is an argument about how the space will be used. Place them with intention, not randomly. Their scale, their activity, and their position all imply spatial use patterns that will be read by anyone evaluating the design.
Handling entourage formats
The provided entourage library contains multiple file formats. Each requires specific handling before use. See Card 04 for format-specific opening procedures. The general workflow after opening: verify background transparency or extract the subject using the selection and masking workflow (Cards 09–10), convert to a Smart Object (Card 06), then place in the composition.
Scale and perspective matching
| Check | How to verify it |
|---|---|
| Figure height relative to scene elements | A standing adult is 5'6"–6'. Verify against known scene elements — a standard door is 7', a curb is 6", a car is 4'6" tall. If the figure doesn't match, resize. |
| Horizon line consistency | In a perspective image, figures' eye level (approximately 5'–5'6" from ground) should align with the scene's horizon line, regardless of their distance from the camera. Figures that violate this read as floating. |
| Perspective foreshortening | Figures farther from the camera appear smaller. In a human-scale perspective, a figure 50' away is roughly half the height of one 10' away. Inconsistent figure sizes at similar depths break spatial believability. |
| Lighting direction | The shadow a figure casts should fall in the same direction as all other shadows in the scene. Mismatched shadow directions are the most visible compositing error in student work. |
Constructing figure shadows
Placed entourage figures need cast shadows on the ground plane. Two approaches:
- Duplicate-and-distort method: Duplicate the figure layer, rasterize the duplicate, apply Edit → Transform → Distort to flatten it to the ground plane at the correct shadow angle, desaturate to black, reduce opacity to 30–50%, set blend mode to Multiply, and position below the figure layer. Gaussian Blur the shadow slightly (0.5–1px) — perfect-edge shadows don't exist in real light.
- Overlay paint method: On a Multiply overlay layer (see Card 07), paint soft shadows beneath each figure with a large, low-opacity brush in a cool desaturated dark. This is faster and produces softer, more atmospheric results for distant figures.
The shadow length and direction must match the overall scene lighting. Identify your sun angle before placing any entourage, and maintain it consistently across all elements.
Replacing Lumion figures with photo-real alternatives
Lumion Education's human figures have a characteristic stylized appearance that reads as rendered rather than real. For presentation images where figure realism matters, use the material ID pass (see Card 19) or a manual selection to remove Lumion figures and replace them with photo-extracted equivalents from the entourage library. Match scale against the surrounding scene geometry, match color temperature to the scene lighting, and construct a cast shadow consistent with the Lumion sun direction in the image.
What breaks
Figures at inconsistent scales — one figure at the correct scale and another at 80% creates an uncomfortable spatial dissonance that the viewer notices before identifying the cause. Verify every figure against a common scale reference before finalizing placement.
Missing shadows on placed figures — a figure with no shadow appears to float above the ground plane. Every entourage element in contact with the ground surface needs a shadow, however minimal.