Hey that's very good. I like the excellent use of seemingly opaque blues to not only set a mood of coldness, and non-organic but also its added texturing. Did you tent the alpha plane??? Great reflection on the armor also. Although I did do a space scene, mine is someone different. More along the lines of your first piece. I am sorry that it is taking me so long but I am waiting on a plug-in. I'll post tommorrow with or without the plug.

Most materials i used were raytraced, with 'Strauss', 'Metal' and some 'Blin' shading. All lights were also raytraced (standard MAX raytracer). No any background images or alpha channels were used - the whole scene was made in 3D. Of course some part of detail actually goes to special textures (with bump and displace mapping), which were created or altered by me. To achieve the effect of "coldness" i used fog and ambient light with same color values. Anti-alias filter was Catmull-Rom (for sharper edges). Only two standard MAX post effects were used - glow and blur (filtered image was additive blended with original, only bright areas were filtered). No other plugins. I'm really glad you liked it. :) As you mentioned it - i decided to remake previous scene (create better lightning, materials and so on). I'll post it in 2-3 days or so. Looking forward for your work!!! P.S. Is it your's ICQ, i'm trying to authorize? ;)