My submission for Clinton “Pwnisher” Jones' Chasm’s Call render challenge, for which the top 100 has yet to be announced.
The Houdini graph I built to procedurally generate the layers of the city.
To simulate shockwaves running through the metal frame, I animated geometry in Blender matching the motion I wanted, then used that as the source for an EmberGen smoke sim.
I rendered a depth pass from an orthographic camera aligned with the direction of the sun, then used that in a volume emission shader to create faux volumetric light rays that render in a fraction of the time.