The first image is a shaded viewport image.

The second image is a "Render preview viewport" image. It uses the OpenGL stuff of your graphics card. In V4, they have been doing at lot of work to make the viewports very sweet as far as display goes. This "picture" is of the model as I work on it, it is not from the "Render Window". I must say though, I still do ALL of my modeling in the wireframe mode since that is the only way you get to see all of the NURBS objects interaction with each other. Anytime that there is "coloring" of the surfaces, you're looking at a mesh of the NURBS surface.    Until McNeel gets their "intersector" function fixed up I can't work with the solids side Rhino as it's too error prone and "buggy". (try filleting two pipes of the same size that form an "x", it will fail most of the time.)

The blue ball was always there, I just was using it to show off the transparency.

The "ribs" are on the backside of the dish, just like on a cut glass piece.

This came in very handy since Simon wanted some for this week's game and I don't have anyother way to show off stuff made of glass.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
When the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. 

 Frank Herbert, author of Dune