The Intergalactic Teapot - A part of Honki's helpful thread of uselessness.

[Honki]

Test render.

[Honki]

We can see by the render that the light is where it's supposed to be.

Now lets add the basic volumetric lighting effect.

In the render menu, click environment. Under the atmosphere rollout, click 'add' and 'volume light'.

Click 'Pick Light' and select your omni light. We'll leave all the settings as default just for now.

[Honki]

Do another test render. YUCK!

[Honki]

Let's fix that crappy rendering up real quick.

Play with the settings to however you like. It's really up to your individual taste. The most important parts however are;

Uncheck the 'Auto' checkbox in the 'Volume' panel, and change the sample volume to 100%. This will make the light ray edges nice and smooth.

You really should add some noise too, as it will give the effect a bit more punch.

Play around with the attenuation settings to your liking.

[Honki]

Test Render! Much nicer.

[Honki]

Lets reduce the omni light's attenuation a bit.
This will make the volume light rays shorter.

[Honki]

See?

[Honki]

Now that our volume light looks nice, lets fix up the exterior of the sphere.
It looks flat and boring basically.

We'll add a skylight to our scene. This will give us an ambient occlusion effect.

Make the colour a drak purple, almost black. We don't really want to light our scene any more, but just give some more depth to the unoccluded parts of the scene.

[Honki]

Test Render!

Marginally better.

[Honki]

We'll now add some inconspicuous highlights around the sphere.

Add another omni light to the scene, and place it to the front/left of your objects.

Turn off shadows and attenuation, and reduce the intensity to one.

[Honki]

In the top viewport, shift and drag the omni light to the right of the scene's objects (instance). Move it a bit further away to alter the effect of the light.

[Honki]

Test Render!

Looking good.

[Honki]

Now we can add a little bit of reflection to the sphere segments, giving them a bit more interest.

[Honki]

And give the background a bit of a nicer hue.
I used a dark purple.

[Honki]

And another test render.