1. Here we will model a basic Virus and render it in Lightwave. So fire up the Modeler and lets make a nifty virus! Start out by making a sphere with the settings shown in figure 1. A tesselated sphere with two segments and a radius of 500mm.

2. Select all polygons using the 'Lasso' (Bottom bar -> Polygons -> Use right mousebutton). This step is important, make sure that you have all the polygons selected before moving further. Then use the 'Bevel' tool (Multiply -> Bevel or use the hotkey b). Bevel them three times like this.
1: Shift: 0mm
Inset: -40mm
2: Shift: 120mm
Inset: 10mm
3: Shift: 20mm
Inset: 10mm
You are gonna end up with figure 2.

4. Now we are in Layout. Load in your object and position the camera in a fitting position, as in figure 3.

5. Now lets texture this bastard! Go into the surface editor and lets start with the basic settings. Start by giving it a colour of full white, RGB 255,255,255. Lower the 'Diffuse' to 0%, activate 'Smoothing' at the bottom. After that its time to set up the 'Luminosity' which is the key to getting the Electronic Microscope effect. Press the little 'T' button next to the 'Luminosity'. We are gonna make a gradient here. So in the top right, set the 'Layer Type' to 'Gradient'. You'll see a big white vertical bar appear, this is our gradient. We are gonna make a smooth transition from black to white. So click once on the white bar to greate a Key. Then click and hold on the key you just created and drag it all the way down to the bottom. When that is done. Change the 'Input Parameter' to 'Incidence Angle'. What this does, with a black-white gradient is that the more a polygons is facing AWAY from you, the whiter it becomes. Now we are done here, figure 4.

6. Its too smooth to look good though, lets add a little texture to it with a bumpmap. In the Surface Editor, click the little 'T' button next to 'Bump' and lets make a bumpmap. Change the 'Layer Type' to 'Procedural'. Set the 'Procedural Type' to 'Crumple', the 'Texture Value' to -200, 'Frequencies' to 20 so we get lots of details. You can leave the rest at their default values, figure 5.

8. THERE! Now all we need to do is setup the camera. So go into the 'Camera Properties', set your resolution to whatever you want and change the 'Antialiasing' to suit your needs. Figure 7.
NOTE: If you use Antialiasing make sure yo deactivate 'Adaptive Sampling' in the 'Camera properties' since for some reason the Digital Confusion doesnt like it.