the planet is just a massive sphere with a texture map, basically. the rings around it are made from a single cylinder with texture and trans maps applied, both caps turned off, lengh set to pretty much 0, and then crazy huge values entered for the diameters and longitudes.
the glowy atmosphere effect around the planet was done by putting several (about 5, i think) extra spheres around it, each a tiny bit bigger than the last, with a two-sided material, where the front was completely see-through (trans 0), and the back was quite high emissive, but trans 0.1 or 0.2. so the closer to the planet, the more of these spheres you see, so the more opaque the colour becomes, creating the impression of a glowy atmosphere, which always stays around the rim of the planet no matter where you put the camera.
the whole planet-and-ring setup has to be really big to keep the impression of scale when you move the camera around. on my first attempt the perspective didn't work, so i had to make the planet 5 times bigger or something 8/
- colclough
