I think this is a great start. My first instinct is to say, just do more of what you're doing. And I'm sure others will have better suggestions, but I can offer this:

I think that once you add a road the scene will come together a lot more, because the buildings will not be so completely separate. And you can consider tying the buildings together with other elements: a sign that spans two buildings, or a single porch across a pair of them. Add a shared railing to the porch, maybe. These things would give the sense that the street was built up in phases.

Also, this doesn't really apply to your question, but in real life the interior of each building would be almost completely dark when seen from the outside, and there would be much more stuff reflected in the windows. Try turning off the light-through-transparency rendering option to see how that looks. Or maybe make the windows much darker and more opaque to fake it.

Finally, the viewpoint is a little higher than eye-level, so it feels a bit like the 7/8 scale buildings at Disney World. If you lower the camera a bit it may feel a bit more real.

Message edited on: 06/27/2004 12:42