The ironwork saga continues!

Sorry for yet another posting that's high on Blender technicalities and low on Disneyland renders, but I think I've decided what I'm going to do about the ironwork. It's a compromise, of course, but until I'm a wealthy man with a render farm in the back room, it'll probably have to do. I WILL make meshes that follow the actual shape of the ironwork, rather than UV-mapping PNG images onto them with alpha, but I'm not going to give them thickness. That'll reduce the number of polys (and thus the render time), but at least from a distance, the effect will be about the same. The major disadvantage is that if I get up close, it'll probably be apparent that the iron is thinner than finest tissue paper. This is not an issue with fully 3D meshes...or with UV-mapped planes, since I would simulate shading in the image texture. But this will hopefully be the best compromise. I cannot possibly express how nice it is to not have to light the balconies and verandas separately.

Now I just need to get up the gumption to start working on the hardcore second-floor ironwork! Gulp...if anyone's got some especially good photos of that area, I'd be much obliged, though I'll hopefully be just fine with what I've already got.