Tonight's update...starting on the ground. This is being done using Carrara 5's backdrop 'mode' and it's Shading Domain Management 'mode'.

The former is something that's only taken me several years to work out how to do :) But now I've sussed it out, found if you take a satellite image from Google maps and use that as the background it's possible to work accurat(ish) placements for things. It's also how the fronts of the buildings where done.

The latter is also a nice concept. It allows you to select small areas of a larger mesh and assign what I know as a material zone to that. That's good here, because one of my bugbears with poser models is how to texture large areas (such as ground).

Yes, app specific shaders will always do a better job than an image. Yes one large areas can use a single map. However sometimes maps may be the only way to get a look, say for instance where a road merges into a dirt track.

And that's a problem because even a 2048x2048 map may get the jaggies.
But now using this approach I can break large areas into smaller separately mapped sections. OK it won't totally solve this issue, but in theory it should reduce it.

After that it'll be the final bit of modelling, the power poles.

Pinky - you left the lens cap of your mind on again.