Anyone used Virtus Walkthrough?
 

This is a 3d program (does modelling and some animation) that costs about 200 dollars). Steven Katz used it in a book I wasted some money on for the storyboards and diagrams. I was thinking this would be a great way to do storyboards, as it already has some built objects in it (chairs, lamps, etc) that you can place in your environment. Does anyone know if it has people already modelled too? I don't know much about 3d modelling and don't really intend to learn it. I just want to know if anyone has used this program, and how successful they were with it.

Sorry, can't really help there, but it calls to mind something I saw awhile ago on a TV show about special effects. They were showing some custom software developed for just what you describe. It allowed them to model the set, camera positions and movements, everything. I think the movie this was used for was The Panic Room. It was quite impressive and was specialized to address the needs of movie production... does someone else know anything about this?

I do quite extensive 3d modeling myself although I've never used Walkthrough. Actually I haven't heard of it for awhile and didn't realize it still existed :-) It came out many years ago, on the Mac actually, and was really the first low cost program of its kind so it got lots of attention. Since you say you don't really want to learn 3d modeling you may find this sort of thing frustrating. It can get very time consuming. But for $200 you don't stand a lot to lose either. Maybe there's a free demo you can download? Other 3d programs are available as free demos.... SketchUp and Cararra are two that I've looked at recently myself. As I recall SketchUp had a walkthrough feature as well (I just did an evaluation and example project which will soon be published as part of an article in a theatrical trade magazine).

I liked the idea of the low price and the prebuilt objects. If it has people models, I'm sold.

SketchUp has free SketchUp from Google version now. Actually it's been so a while. Actually it's really useful thing for storyboarding. Only downsides are: no light department and You cannot be Your camera/lens specific... at least in easy way.

I used VW when it was new in the early 90's. It was pretty cool back then, but I was really just playing with it then not trying to do anything serious.