2nd link is a video:
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Wow!
You did this completely in Blender?
Cause this detail…
Amazing
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Some photoshop work on the still frame (for high rez prints) but the video is a single render. Was my first all Blender project. 175MB scene file.
How long did it took to render?
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You should say that the 2nd link is a video in your main post.
This is a neat idea and it does contain so much…
They say there: “Our planet ain’t flat … it’s layered!”
3mins / frame at 1920x800px
I like that line! Thanks.
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Really nice,
can we have more breakdown of your process?
how did you make the buildings for example
are they all manually placed?
Or maybe this is some googleearth file?
Impressive 
Most of the layout was done manually. In order to keep the .blend file light, I instanced small sections of a Hong Kong model + lots of particles systems for rooftop details, construction cranes, antennas, trees, platforms etc.
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Very good job.
This is one of those projects, where I have no idea how you pulled it off. The placement of the buildings are super organic the buildings are seemingly not repeating. I have been using Blender for a while now, but this boggles my mind, would love to see some more extensive explanation or breakdowns. +3 minutes for HD frame, how is that even possible with all the volumetric and polygonal data, I just don’t believe that 
very nice project.
Indeed some very impressive piece of artwork. How did you manage to keep the file size this small. I allways end up with lots of Gb. Great work and welcome to the site.
Was 2GB originally but created all sorts of cuda errors. I ended up relying heavily on instances for city blocks and particles for smaller/random detail.
We initially developed a tool to procedurally generate a city in Houdini but it became clear that Blender couldn’t handle that much data. (5gb) I gave it all up and manually created the layout using parts of a Hong Kong obj… it took a while!
As far as the rendering goes, it’s as minimal as possible. There are no glossy shader for example. All of the organic terrain is map based displacement and instanced. Cycles light paths are all at 1.
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Beautiful work! I’ve been hunting for film quality enviro examples in Blender. Excellent job done here. What other addons have you used on this scene?
Impressive stuff! Thou I would very much prefer it without the text 
“Scatter 3” was used for the grassy foreground. (portrait image only) But nothing else really. That said, it wasn’t for a lack of trying every city scatter addons out there.
I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!
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