Which stage do you mean? Let me summarize the process.Briefly; modeling ships was the first step. It's like modeling an aircraft actually. Secondly, texturing. Shortly; I used an almost white/grey greeblish texture for the base. Then painted lines, colors, blue windows ( 2 px square brush with linear dodge mode ) etc.For the texture base I used the white parts of original mass effect alliance cruiser model's texture. I took white parts and blended them, then enhenced them by copy/paste method in photoshop.After finishing ship models ( that was a one year long process while I learned so much at digital modeling and painting and I made dozens of ship models though I still have some ships waiting to be finished. ) I imported them and arranged them as you see them in picture.Took nasa earth photo as background. Used camera ( took render with that camera ). Took spotlight that it acted like sun. Also emplaced a second spotlight no other direction with lower light settings.Finally, press render button. There are some tutorials on internet about these topics if you're interested.Used 3ds max 2011 for modeling and rendering but any other 3d modeling sofwares like blender, maya, cinema 4d are comparable if you know how to use them.Hope this summary will be helpfull