For some parts I used automatic mapping. This will try to project texture from different angles.

You might notice that texture looks very big. In UV texture editor you can select all UV’s and scale them. This will repeat texture.

So cityscape is starting to take shape.

For small lights I created very simple geometry and assigned surface shaders to them. I added bit of glow to them. You can add glow also in compositing passes.

Now Rendering Layers. Select all objects expect that tiny glowing objects (grouping and selection set will be your great ally in this step), and in channel box check render. This will display render layers. By default all objects are assigned to masterLayer. Click that second button (one with tiny blue ball), this will assign objects to new layer you created. Double click to layer and change its name to Color. All new layers will be named layer1 by default. Check R in the box in the left. That means that layer is rendered. Master layer shouldn’t have that R.

With same selection (all expect tiny glows), create new layer. Hold right mouse button on layer1 (that new layer), you can see presets submenu. Choose Ambient occlusion. This will create shader override for all objects in that layer. Name layer occlusion.

In hypershade you can see that new surface shader was created. In color input it has mlb_amb_occlusion1. That is Mental Ray occlusion sampler. Set samples to 32. More samples you set it will have less noise and it will take longer to render.

If you render that layer, you can see result. In compositing I will multiply this layer with color to make details more visible.

Our scene still looks normal.