In 3DS Max:
Basically what I did was set up two lights on either side of the Enterprise (one key light closer to the camera at 1.2 intensity with a bright blue hue, one fill light on the other side of it with an intensity of about 0.2 with a darker blue hue), then rendered it out by itself, animated, as a TGA image sequence. When that was finished, I then used
this old tutorial I made a while back for Sci-Fi Meshes to create the wormhole, using an extremely long cylinder gizmo and rendering that out separately by itself as an animated TGA sequence.
Then I used a nifty tool known as Max2AE to export the camera data from 3DS Max to After Effects (you could also export camera data by rendering out your individual elements as an RPF sequence, though I have yet to really experiment with that).
In After Effects:
I placed my Enterprise TGA sequence over my Wormhole TGA sequence and did some color correction on both layers using curves and levels adjustments (I really can't give an exact estimate on how well, bottom line is I made my whites a bit whiter and my darks a bit darker).
Then I added a new Adjustment layer and added in the Trapcode Particular plugin to that layer (Trapcode Particular is an advanced After Effects Particle Editor), then I used the
"Galactic Orb" tutorial on VideoCopilot to create the stars. (Andrew Kramer is awesome, he actually did the opening title logo for Trek XI if I'm not mistaken ^_^)
I also added the Trapcode Shine effect to my Enterprise to give it those streaks coming off the hull by messing around with its built-in color values. Trapcode Shine is basically a plugin that generates light streaks (think Volumetric lighting).
Ultimately, I was inspired by this warp effect, which I unwittingly helped contribute to.
http://youtu.be/9HXz2oOlN0A?t=7m50sFor the sunlight, what I did was create an omni light with a medium intensity (I want to say 0.4) and a yellowish hue and set it far off in the background. This served as my "decoy" light, if you will (that's what I applied the sun flare to). Directly above that light, I placed a target direct light, with a much higher intensity of 1.2 and a brighter yellow hue. I set the target to the middle of my scene.
Then I added in a skylight with a dark blue hue and an intensity of 0.2, and then I enabled the "Light Shader" plugin in the Render Settings menu.
Hope that helps a bit more, any questions let me know