As you can see from my signature, I'm an aspiring city graphics maker from the rising generation. Now I would like to ask all vets here to share their ancient secrets: How do you actually make your cities? I mean, do you use cut'n'paste, do you draw them in Photoshop, do you use 3D applications?

For my first cityset I used just Paint Shop Pro, drawing the buildings in 2D and then cut'n'pasting them together. Now I'd like to continue city making, but I'm not sure what method to use. I recently downloaded Blender, I haven't got accustomed to it yet, but I consider using it for creating buildings. Is that reasonable?

So, dear city makers, this is your chance to spread your accumulated knowledge to the posterity. :)

Well.. I'm thinking of using Open FX to make cities and buildings for the 40K mod. There probably is no problem in using a 3d tool for cities and the like.

I would suggest you consider Bryce. It is cheap (40 bucks right now at Fry's (in USA)). It is better suited to simple things like building creation and is much easier to learn. I just started using Bryce. I've never made a a city... If you want to see what can be done with bryce after just a couple of days of fiddling, you can follow the links in my sig.
The jail was time consuming. It has alot of detail which is not visible due to scale. I made it large, and shrank it down. The castle is probably cooler, but is alot less detailed. It just looks right. (in my humble but biased opinion)

Thanks for your suggestions. Bjornlo, your buildings are cool! :) Do you know if there is a trial version of Bryce for getting to know it? Blender and OpenFX are free, and that's a great advantage.
I'll probably have to try out OpenFX, but not today, because I have a physics exam tomorrow and I'll fail completely if I don't start learning right now! :sad:

You can also make buildings with pov-ray (it's freeware program), but I think I'm the only one here to suggest that :lol: .

My first city set, I just did old fashioned cut 'n paste. For a my next wav of LOTR cities, I am using a 3-D program called ppmodeler, another free program which is in Kinboat's signature I believe. IMHO, it is much better than at making models than OpenFX. However, as I am not quite familiar with ppmodeller's rendering, I export it to a .3ds format so I can render and set my view angles right in OpenFX.

Thanks for your suggestions. Bjornlo, your buildings are cool! :) Do you know if there is a trial version of Bryce for getting to know it? Blender and OpenFX are free, and that's a great advantage.
I'll probably have to try out OpenFX, but not today, because I have a physics exam tomorrow and I'll fail completely if I don't start learning right now! :sad:

Free is nice. I love not spending money. :D
I do not know if there is a Bryce demo. I trolled around on their website but didn't see anything.
The website is http://bryce.daz3d.com/
This tool integrates well with Poser, the most popular character animator (in fact Poser includes some Bryce technology on license).
Try all the free stuff first. If you want something simpler to use, then look at getting Bryce. I don't know of anything else out there that is close to as easy.
For example, look at POVRay and then marvel not just at how good Aaglo's units are, but that he can even make any at all.
Free is usually free for a reason. If you spend many months or years writing something, most would want to be paid for it one way or another. This is not to say that the free stuff sucks, it does not. Just that I found it harder to work with.. any my time is so limited. I've got a busy job with 3 little kids & a wife that take most of my of my time... I typically can only spend 1-2 hours a day on my computer (except saturdays). So for me, ease of use and the amount of time it would take me to master it were bigger considerations then it might be to others.

My cities are 75% MS Paint and 25% Photoshop. ;) I'm a total dunce at 3D graphics programs, so I have to do things pixel by pixel (which is why it takes me so long to finish even one set :blush: ).

@Bjornlo: How is Bryce like? Are there step-by-step tutorials?

My cities are 75% MS Paint and 25% Photoshop. ;) I'm a total dunce at 3D graphics programs, so I have to do things pixel by pixel (which is why it takes me so long to finish even one set :blush: ).

@Bjornlo: How is Bryce like? Are there step-by-step tutorials?

I was strickly paint programs too (90% photoshop, 10% photodraw, etc).
There are several tutorials on Bryce. Including this one:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=104183 by Hikaro Takayama.
There are more on the daz3d web site. And dozens of them online. I'm not a 3d guru, and I thought Bryce was easy to learn and easy to use. There are a few things I wish it did, which I guess programs cost 10-20 times as much do... but at the cost of being more difficult to use.
Bryce is not as easy as MS Paint, but it is no harder then Photoshop.

If you live near a Fry's, it is hard to go wrong with a 40.00 program.
It takes a few days before you can do anything, but once you spend 10-20 hours (I'm guessing) you can probably create most basic things. The time will be shorter or longer depending on your experiance with similar.
If you're good at geometry (visualizing objects) or math, or anything similar to that then Bryce is easy. If you're not, you can still do it but it might take a few more days.
For example, to make a mosque roof...
in Photoshop you draw pixel by pixel until you get the shape you want.
In Byrce you would ake a cylinder (for the column)
make a ball (for the base roof)
make a cone (for the point part that sticks up)
and for extra points you could make a torus (think doughnut) to act as the base of the roof, where the ball meets the cylinder.
All these objects are built in. Just plop them down, size them, and voila.
Need them bigger/smaller? No problem.. You can group them and size them as a new single object. Make as many copies as you want, etc..
I'm willing to bet almost anyone can do it... I'm not an expert. I'm only just getting started, but I am amazed at how cool some of the things I manage to make turn out. Much cooler then when I draw them.
For the time being I plan to render the parts that do better with rendering and draw the parts that are easier to draw.
For example, look at my Knights Templar splash screen. The flags and the knights were drawn, the rest was rendered.
I don't own any stock in Daz. I don't think Bryce can do everything. I do think it is very easy. And by far the cheapest commercial product in its class. If you are gifted (like Aaglo, Kinboat, and so on) you can probably make works of wonder with anything. But for the rest of us, this can be a wonderful (if not exclusive) tool to make some cool stuff.

Just to be clear... if I could justify(afford) one of the fancier render programs I'd love to try out a whole bunch of them. But since the nice ones cost $1000's, they are beyond my budget as a hobbist.

Blender, Bryce, OpenFX, PovRay... Phooh, this is getting confusing. @Bjornlo: Of course you're right, you have to pay for quality. But as this is only a hobby for me (and not even the most important one of my hobbies) I would like to spend my limited money (I'm student, you know) for other things. So I'll rather use a program which is not entirely perfect, but good enough and free.
So far I have tried only Blender, which seems quite complicated. Probably it's a matter of experience, but I think I would need some time to get used to it.

You can also make buildings with pov-ray (it's freeware program), but I think I'm the only one here to suggest that :lol: .
I second it, but buildings are about the only thing I would recommend ;)

Also, after you have the basic graphics created using a 3D tool, you can do the rest with MS Paint and GIMP, both free. I'm sure Photoshop and Paintshop have lots of fancy functions, but you can do lots of cool stuff with GIMP and C&Ping is super-easy in Paint.

Blender... it's powerful. And cities would be a good first project... plus it has a lively forum community at Elysium.com where you can turn to if you get stuck.

I would have to suggest a paid 2d program, because with the gimp, palette editing is difficult.