Contest : Islamic medieval city

Submitted render (click for Hi res)

BlenderGuru.com contest – Ancient civilization : Islamic medieval city

hi everyone,
I’m posting something different this time, as you may know BlenderGuru.com are running periodically very interesting contests with different subjects, finally I found some free time to participate, and I really liked theme; so this is a work in progress thread, that I will update over time…
I hope that you’ll find it useful and don’t hesitate to give me some feedback /critics please.
thanks.

Day 1: Concept Design
before starting the 3d modeling process it’s important to have a clear image in my mind, so I’ve made those sketches on the go, I mixed different elements that makes an islamic city; the cubic houses, the Mosque, and the big wall that protects the whole city, I tried different points of view

and finally I liked the point of view at the entry of the town; a perspective showing the huge door…

after that, I got the Idea to reproduces my own city (Algiers at the 18 – 19 century) instead of making something from scratch,
after some research I found this great painting by William Wyld

Algiers Harbor by William Wyld – 1833

Day 2: Base modeling

at first, I set the scene scale by simply taking the mosque dimension as reference, the mosque still exist to this day, so just used google earth to pick it’s dimension. then started the classic modeling process …from cubes, planes…extruding, cutting with the knife tool…etc

Day 3 : setting the scene mood and adding details
I like to work in a non linear workflow, I prefer to set the base lighting, textures and global mood before finalizing the modeling, I believe the sooner you start working on those areas the further you go, and the better is the result…