How to

Dear Blender users,

although I’m not a complete Blender newbie, I need your help. Please read the following text:
Two protons (red or orange balls) approach each other.
Zoom in on one of the protons. It is composed of three quarks wobbling and moving around. A vague half transparent tube (the gluon field, being strongest in the middle of the proton and weaker further away from the centre (Fig. 1)) connects the three quarks. The vaguely triangular gluon field fades out towards the outer part of the proton, where it looks more and more spherical.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/4472/fig1ky9.jpg

I would do the quarks as three spheres but I have no idea how to create the gluon field. What tools would you recommend? Any specific tutorial I should read/watch? I have tried it with particles (setting the three quarks as emittors) but failed to achieve something useable. Thanks in advance for your hepl!

If it is described as “a vague half transparent tube…” why not use that? Make a semi transparent mesh, with maybe a blend texture to allow fading and some other textural ‘effect’.

The whole things sounds pretty doable once you iron out a few things.
For this gluon field, try making your object material ray-transparent with a fresnel effect. This will make it transparent when facing the camera, and faces at angles to the camera will be less transparent. Search it.

Welcome to BA by the way.