Modeled in 3dsmax. Rendered in LuxRender (v1.0RC3). A hydra primitive transformed with the use of some different modifiers. I employed the use of Megabevel and Quad Chamfer plugin modifiers extensively to build and carve out some complex surfacing on the hydra star primitive. Unfortunately, a lot of the surface detail isn't quite apparent in this render due to the material lights and glare effect, but it ended up being a rather deep modifier stack, and ornate topology result. The modeling was almost all modifier-based. I don't think I used the Graphite tools at all to get this.