I believe this is just about finished. The extra ship is added, drones are slightly more box shaped, the rings have been changed, and the background.Its probably me but Bryces standard starfield ended up being hopeless for a background. Consulted a friend who owns a very large telescope and has a huge collection of starfield pictures to get an understanding of what the stars should look like out there. Then another 3 hours, on and off, playing with the material to finally get the desired effect. I'd appreciate comments on improvements and if anything else might need to be changed. Footnote: Username change due to old name having certain connotations that I wanted nothing to do with.

Very nice. This is a vast improvement over where you started !! The rings are great. Only thing I can see at this point would be things like the radio array/dishs. I'm not sure if you're applying the same texture as the ship, but some of them seem to look a little off. You might want to texture them seperate from the ship. But like I said, it's an awesome step forward!!

If you would like rings more like this I would be glad to try and talk you through a tutorial or can post this planet to free stuff for you.

Thanks Rim, do you mean the whole antenna or just the stands? I included a pic of the dish, if you could let me know?

G'day FOG, would be very interested how you did the rings

For background starfields I use the programm universcreator. you can create starfields with galaxies, nebulas etc and apply it to a big sphere that surround your scene. programm awailible at www.diardsoftware.com.

I agree wit PERVERS universe is a great program. I just posted a message above with an attempt to show how I made my rings. If it's not clear feel free to ask any questions.

I will have to say that, in my opinion, the starfield is too dense, both for asthetics and realism. In fact, if you were really "there", you probably wouldn't see many stars at all, if any, because the reflected light from Saturn would drown everything else out... But what we want is a nice image, right? :-)

Fozzi, I mean mostly the stands although even the dish could use a simple metal texture too. But the closeup does make it look a lot better. I only said that because in the overall picture, you notice that the texture of the ship seems applied after you joined the objects. But I may be wrong on this. I do have to hand it to you though, it's a very well done model.. and something I could not have done in Bryce. At least, not without losing what little hair I have left. :)

Rim, thankyou for your compliment, it is very much appreciated. I was starting to wonder if the model was any good, just glad to know I'm on the right track. I'm not sure what happened with the texture. I woke up at about 3am in the morning and found the ship in 5 peices, when I put it back together, it looked alright. Woke up next morning and found that the texture had gone strange. Thats what happens when you fall asleep with one hand on the mouse.