Not really a new idea as the tutorials use this to do grass but figured it might be useful to someone. Quick 'city'...
You can even place a more complex building in a group in the particles -here I made a quick copy of some of the building layers and rotated to make a side. Not perfect but might be useful to someone.
EDIT: Actually might look better with matching buildings as they blend into each other ...
Well, it's a kind of dysfunctional city No offense meant here, just a first impression that came to mind.
But it could work if you tweak it enough. On more organic forms (like you see in nature) it might really work convincingly. So if it's a futuristic city, where the future has returned more to nature (in a high-tech form), then it would surely work.
You may be right. I thought of it more as a 'distant' city -a background- to fill in a large area. You can place more detailed buildings in the area where the action is.
Just to finish beating the dead horse here is the skyline but with a quick mask over it to even out the shapes a little.
This is more a proof of concept thing - I didn't take care to make it pretty but I offer the idea for whatever it's worth.
It's a nice idea, but I'm afraid it doesn't give you much control over composition and the way the eye flows through the scene.
Having that many buildings also creates a busy background against which your characters will be hard to see.
I once was working on an illustration (never finished) with some buildings in the background. I'm no good at architecture, so this was new for me. I looked up some reference photos on the web and was really astonished to find out how much variation there is in the typical large city building. I always thought of them as simple gray boxes, but there are a lot of different shapes and colors in every building.
Now I get annoyed whenever I see a futuristic city in a scifi movie and all the buildings look like they were designed by the same architect.
No offense meant here, just a first impression that came to mind.
I thought of it more as a 'distant' city -a background- to fill in a large area. You can place more detailed buildings in the area where the action is.
