That was 3dsmax+greeble plugin, rendered in vray. I too enjoy generating geometry in many different ways, making it more organic can be difficult but there are lots of techniques for each application you use, it just depends what you are aiming for.
lies!! it's too fryish!!.. but no seriously, how did you get that cool glare? I'm taking it that it was done in post so my first guess would be maybe a gaussian blur with screen blending at near 100% and.. hmm. probably using levels to get it to "clamp" more of the lower range bright areas out of it.. right? I must admit this effect is very attractive and i'm very intrigued as to how it was exactly done.
ah but that's bloom instead of glare.. which is more HDRish, if you get what i mean. Anyway checking it out, it's nice but it definitely isn't as robust as the settings you'll find in fry or even indigo. But i digress; thank you for the tip
(Any way to get less-rectangular greebles? these are great, i'm just trying to get something like this in a more organic, more complex geometry.)
Vray has lens effects now too [link]
I can't remember how I did that glow exactly. could've been a ps plugin, might have done it in after effects or fusion.
Could've just been a layer made B+W and leveled for highs and then blurred, repeated with a larger blur and another layer etc Probably screen