I first opened Cinema 4D and clicked on the icon that looks like a bag with a cloud inside to find the objects catalogue. I then found the buildings tab and chose some buildings that I wanted to use. I actually didn't end up using the buildings shown above as I didn't like how they looked.
I ended up choosing this building in the end (I just duplicated it twice to make a "U" shape with them). I thought that this layout would be a bit easier to work with than the previous option that I made.
I added a couple of objects to the area to make it a little more interesting (I added some bins, a bench, a box, and some lamp posts).
I then started making the neon sign, using the text option to add in the text. I wrote the word "welcome" because I wasn't really sure what to write for this. I then used the circle tool and the sweep option to make the 3D tube effect on the text.
I then changed the orientation of the text to have the letters vertical instead of horizontal (I did this by just pressing enter after each letter of the word in the text box/panel). I then changed the colour/options of the sweep that I put on the text to a pink/purple and added a glow effect.
I then played about with the lighting options that Cinema 4D has, adding in lights to change the default options. I also changed the colour of the text from pink to green as I thought it stood out more.
I then added in some more lights and placed them on the lamp posts. I changed the light type to spot so that the light was given out like a real lamp post. I also changed the colour of these lights to an orange because I preferred that to having white light coming from them.
This is what everything looked like before I rendered it. (I realised that I hadn't gotten a close up of the sign since I changed it's colour so that's why there's just a screenshot of that here too).
I then started to render this. I selected Global Illumination, I think this did something to how the lights worked but I can't really remember. It made the lamp posts/the wall behind more visible so it doesn't look like light is coming from nowhere, so that's good.
I then played around with the physical sky options, changing the time of day and weather options. I added some fog to mine and set the time to 6:34 pm and the date to the 14th of November so that the sky was dark.