Attached Link: http://www.weirdass.net

For Boolean buildings at night _ make the texture of the negative window cuts a simple yellow or green and turn off "cast, receive, self" shadows for the material. also, jack diffsusion an ambience all the way to 100. This will help simulate the glowing office windows. Beware of boolean cities, as these scenes are HUGE renders. For close ups, stuff right in the camera, I use digital photos that I've torn the life out of in Photoshop. I'll make an elevation map, a mask, a specular, and a color image that apply to various parts of terrains. Whole trick is to build your town piece by piece in multiple files, and then join them at the end. Also keep in mind that in a city a) you never have an unobstructed line of sight, and b) there is crap on the ground everywhere. Follow the url to my site, scroll down past the Starry Ones and look for "attention Bryce People" to download a "NYC terrain/architextural thingie" to see how the second technique works. attached art (excerpted from The Starry Ones) uses technique 1.