I have a project that I know will need an animation before long. I have done simple animations before, but never a large scene.
I am already anticipating simplifying the model as much as possible (deleting objects not visible, etc.) but I am looking for ideas to speed things up. Would texture baking be of any help? Collapsing the model in chunks and optimizing with maintain material boundaries on?
I doubt that baking to texture will help you especially when buildings are involved. If the scene is too heavy though, yes, you can delete some objects not visible to boost performance. Also, collapsing the stack to minimum helps in stability.