During the odd free weekend in the summer I had a play with Blender volumetrics, their Cycles rendering engine, and some modelling.  After an initially steep learning curve, I was very impressed with the general ease of use and speed with which you could put something together.  The above image was mostly done in Blender, with a little tweaking in Photoshop.

Here is a closeup of the basic starfighter I made, which was mainly an exercise in simple box modelling and UV mapping: