I had an image in mind earlier this evening about a ringed planet whose inhabitants, over millennia, built a supermassive structure to bring them closer to the stars, much in the manner of the Tower of Babel, as the title suggests. Several hours laters here we are 
Blender internal render + glow plugin with post work done in Photoshop.
Thank you very much for viewing my work,
RobertT
Impressive scene!
I like the tower and stars color.
Could you tell me which part did you work in the Photoshop?
Thanks Toudou. I used PS mainly to add deepen contrast and to draw out some colors in the halo nebula I have in the back, also to accentuate the upper areas of the rings and the star in the backgroud a bit and to deintensify some of the outer stars. Post work took around fifteen minutes. Most of the time in this project was spent modeling the superstructure and adjusting lighting/materials.
The stars were not Blender default stars but several halo meshes in the background. The main star came alive a bit from the Blender glow plugin. A tiny part of this was an exercise for me to develop as quickly as possible an idea from idea to modeling to final result. After spending a few weeks now on The Bard, I was in the mood for something quick and different tonight
RobertT
i like it a lot man!
starting early for the blender 2.50 splash are we? 
man, you kick so much ass it hurts…
(i so need to play with the new blender features…)
That is just amazing, Robertt. And great story behind this image. I wonder if we could be capable of building something like this 
Robertt, now that is impressive!
I love the sense of scale in this scene, now I just need a bigger version for my desktop background (hint hint )
Soo much more impressive than your last work…
Thank you, Robertt, for your explanation.
I was very interested in your star color and nebula. I think that if we make those stars and nebula in blender, it would take a time than adding them by other software before reaching our satisfaction. I think.
One of your better images IMO. Really nice scene and mood.
BgDM
SWEEEEET! :o
Love it as usual Robertt!
I’d kill for a wireframe…
Awesome work, man! I particularly like the colors you chose.
I do however have a sligh crit: the uppermost rings look a bit offcenter, more to the left of the image than the lower ones.
wonderful, beautiful. Congrats!
nothing I can say about it other, I’m just enjoying looking at it =)
Thanks so much everyone for the positive and supportive comments! 
I’ve attached a wire view below. One of my lower poly scenes, just over 500k verts 
Planet consists of a few layers, including a cloud, ground, and smaller structures layer. Rings were doubled up a couple of times to add depth and slight visual variances. Stars/nebula were toned down for this render, and glow sequence was not used.
RobertT
Massive and impressive…
…like always 
very cool, must have been a killing job
wow, very impressive
I wish however you’d post higher res (maybe 1680*1050?) so we could use as desktop backgrounds
Stunning!! How’d you tackle building that detailed tower? Any strategy?
great work robert! now it is time to apreciate your work… this render gets a 10 in my book for straight up coolness. lighting is awsome, the emiting red areas on the tower really give it a nice sci-fi feel. the color choices are most excellent, very warm and very powerful… complimenting the contrast of the deep and brilliant cosmos to the massive tower errected to reach, if not rival it.
this corellation with aid of the butressing onthe building gives off a feeling of religious drive and warship of the stars. much like the warship of god in romanesque and gothic times… driving buildings higher and higher, closer to the heavens, and becoming more intricate to not only allow for higher builds but let in more light. im not sure if you ever contimplated any of this, but it is interesting… because it is quite an adequate metaphor for human development, attachment, and drive to be closer to higher powers.
i really enjoy this image, but if i may…
i would say… people may hate me for saying this… id like to see more detail on the spire. it looks great as is to be sure, but when scaled against a planet you canthelp but feel like the smooth edges that showing the spec are too large for their lack of varience. from what i can tell, those parts may be a mile long yet look smooth as silk. it just seems off some how… although im not sure how much it would be worth going back and messing with it. but then again… only 500k verts, please. youve got 300k more in you easy also, im crying for a larger render …
thank you for sharing
