Build a glassy orb in After Effects

In a new tutorial Galactic Orb, Andrew Kramer builds a zoom animation inside a glassy sphere (ala Orion's Belt) in After Effects with only built-in plug-ins. He starts by building the orb using real-life textures and then animates a camera through 3D particles. Looks good.

Update: after viewing the tutorial it's now hard to see a whole sphere!

For another approach see Creating a Glass Globe by Kurt Murphy.