Hi Jonathan,

Commenting post 63: Hi Jonathan, Thanks! Usually the first thing I do is to have a look on http://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/ there are so many models there that you are almost 100% sure to find what you need. A big part of the models are available as collada (.dae) files, which open in many 3D applications, otherwise you need to open them in sketchup and export them to collada (or any other format, if you install the appropriate plugin in sketchup). Models from the 3D warehouse are not always very good. Often they are too badly modeled to be used directly. But it is often not much work to fix them, or, if they are really bad, remodel a new one on top of it.

This is often the case for furniture, like chairs, etc. I usually find the 3D warehouse models too heavy (way too many facets, and too hard to simplify, because not modeled very regularly). Then I rebuild a model from scratch, on top of the imported one. It goes very fast, because you just follow the same dimensions. My model looks almost the same as the imported one, but has only a fraction of the faces. This has big impact on render times, and when you do animations you want to keep precise control over the render time.

If you want to look at the blender model of the Maresia shop, drop me a mail (my email address is under the top right icon on this page) and I send you a link