Use a landscape, sky object for the scene, minor adjustments to create the atmosphere I intended.
step 2 of 5
This is the gun, cylinder for the base, torus rings for the glass containment, its basically simple objects just arranged pretty.
step 3 of 5
Camera, with protection on, moved the gun into position and played a little with the angles I wanted for the final scene.
step 4 of 5
This is the more technical bit, I used emitters with a pyrocluster shader for the fireballs that the gun shoots. I would have changed the colours to make it plasma shots but I did not have time.
The emitters fire for 5 frames and then stop and a high speed with a medium gravity setting to create a scene where shots are actually fired,
step 5 of 5
This step shows the few textures I used from the content library.
Then it was just a case of rendering, global illumination and ambient occlusion on.