Satellite Map:
This is intense. I’m working on a large environment myself. How many hours do you have into this? I’m at about 20 on my project.
And I like the “Partners” render with the DOF. Very cool.
wow, it all looks amazing, i am working on a large environment as well, it takes a lot of time. keep up the good work
Somewhere Walt Disney must be smiling at the terrific job you are doing on this project. I missed this previously, but I’m sure going to be admiring your progress going forward.
Amazing work. I’m stunned by the detail and the time spent. I’d get lost in all the detail. Congratulations on a really exceptional project.
mmoore500: Hundreds of hours by now. I have absolutely no way of guessing unfortunately.
harleynut97: Thanks! While the updates may be sporadic, I guarantee that I won’t stop working on it for a long time.
3dmedieval: Thank you :). Since the updates are so spaced out now, I’m glad there are still some long time viewers ;).
Update, added some more buildings, specifically the second part of the Hall of Champions and the first part of the Bakery. I am currently working on the second part of the Bakery (the green pillars to the right in the renders).
Recently a lot of time was put into creating a “night” scene. This included putting in the string lights in the correct locations, adding area lights for all the string lights, adding the street lights, and adding (roughly) correct spotlights around and on the Cinderella Castle. Most of the castle spotlights are shooting from the correct locations (such as the moat surrounding the castle and from above Sir Mickey’s and Castle Couture) however some were only roughly placed (such as the spotlights that are within the outer wall).
I found out the rough way that having street lamps that have emitting light bulbs, and string lights with an emission texture, create a lot more noise than having default lamps and area lamps
I also found out that I was using instanced objects incorrectly, so I spent quite a bit of time replacing objects with instanced objects. However, this also helped save a lot of memory which is good since I can barely fit a couple layers at a time onto VRam.
Finally, the night scene was rendered with 6000 samples per pixel, and the final image looks that way only after a lot of firefly removal.
My goodness, Otto… the castle in the nighttime shot looks almost indistinguishable from what it looks like in a photo I have of it…
…I’m truly in awe. So glad to see you’re still keeping up on this project. =)
Dan
Yea… it’s really good to see him back at it… I love this thread. All of the new renders are great, but like jdaniels said, the nighttime shot if fantastic… the only thing missing in these renders are the long lines of people to get on the rides 
wow, what a great project, a huge task, wonderfully executed. just mindboggling what you did… i love it. very inspiring!
This is epic! The lack of imperfections/dirt on the models/textures lend this a fairy tale like dreaminess that i think works brilliant for the given context.
The renders could use some post effects though - bloom/glare etc.
Nice job
anuraag_01: The renders do actually have post on them, I just don’t want to over-do it. Perhaps I could emphasize it more…
harleynut97: Hah, don’t get me started 
If I have the time/resources, I’m going to add people…
JDaniels: Thanks, glad I’m getting closer
Recently I spent a bunch of time creating a high-res model of the top of Uptown Jewelers. I took a reference shot when down there that really struck me visually and wasn’t too complex to create in detail, so I went about trying to get a photorealistic render of it. I think I got close, but it’s not quite there…
While it’s probably apparent, the left is cg the right is real.
Also (while pretty obvious if you think about it), it is really important to model the surrounding buildings to get realistic lighting, even if it is just putting giant planes where the buildings would be, as it was in this case. The next two photos show before and after renders when the planes were added. It took me a while to realize why the bottom of the balconies weren’t getting dark enough.
Wow 
just a little exposure adjustment and that could be identical to the photo - or close enough as makes no difference. Really impressive work here, consistently detailed modeling and great renders. I remember stumbling upon this thread long ago when I was just starting to get serious with blender, it’s nice to see you haven’t given up
I think the simple sun+sky daytime lighting works well, though I’m curious to see what some proper HDR lighting could do.
Wow. Those 2 images are so close that it’s insane. I honestly couldn’t tell which was which. Great job!
Wow!!! Most impressive work!!! To use the word excellent is downplaying how awesome this truly is.
Holy ****!
Woooooooooooooow amazing !!! :o