All you need for giving your pictures this kind of 'magic' is... blood, sweet and tears ! ;-) More seriously, for making buildings and urban environments, you can use the simple primitives of Vue. With lots of imagination and patience, you'll see that boolean operations can make incredible things... If you want to start slowly, go to the renderosity's freestuff section. Here, you'll find buildings and other urban models. Use'em, and maybe mix them with 'booleaned' vue primitives, for hours of pleasure... :-) My only one advice is : a good picture are for the major parts good textures and, as important, good light settings ! The most beautifull pictures that you can see in the galery are not always complexe pictures. Placement of elements could sometime take only three or four hours, even less... But, the textures of all these elements, what makes a Poser character don't look like a Poser character, but a real people is the time you spend to work on textures. And, for the global look of your scene, for making all elements exists in harmony, it's lighting settings... A free other advice : always think that you can make all you want to make. The only trick is to find how... and if you don't find by yourself, post your questions here...