This was also a part of my master's degree back in 2009,
It was actually a group project.
with 3 different scenes allotted to 3 group mates, mine was the "Grand Canal" and the "Rialto Bridge"
the complete scene has about 2 Million Polys.
the animation was rendered as a whole and it took about 4 days to render on a core 2 duo 2.4 with 4 gig's ram.
