Beer Bottle render test

[kosso_olli]

This is a project to test how close you can get to a photographed result. No postwork apart from color corrections straight in the Vfb.
Beer bottle designed and modeled by Martin Piechotta in Cinema 4D.
The shaders and lighting setup was done from scratch. Please make sure to watch the image in high-res.

Critics welcome.

Regards

Oliver

[fixeighted]

The label/cap is great but I'd argue that the glass needs more tiny imperfections and the bubbles are too uniform in shape for my taste and some of them just seem a little too large/stick out a bit much, aesthetically
I like this approach https://greatscottfree.com/beer-bottle-visualization ....a blend of both - though he is missing some bubbles on the edges of the bottle which would make it look even better

[kosso_olli]

Well, I got something like this in mind when doing the condensation. The solution you posted is too flat in my opinion and leaves no room for the nicely shaped highlights in the droplets.

[fixeighted]

Yes that example is old but I like the runs in the surface. Yours is still good

[rusteberg]

I'm no expert on bottle product rendering, but I am an expert on beer. Is that Krombacher reference a photo or render? Agree the droplets could use some work. Right now it looks like you grabbed a luke warm bottle of beer, wiped the bottle clean and then applied droplets of water uniformly to the surface... Droplets look good themselves, just appear too "staged". The example fixeighted posted looks like the kind of beer I like. Cold beer. The roughness in reflection helps portray that in those examples. Regardless, at 4.8% I could drink these all day long.

[kosso_olli]

Is that Krombacher reference a photo or render? Agree the droplets could use some work.
...Wiped the bottle clean and then applied droplets of water uniformly to the surface... Droplets look good themselves, just appear too "staged".

It is a photo.
Droplets look staged cause they are. In the photo reference they carefully placed each droplet with a syringe. They are Glycerol, not water.
I don't know for the rest of the world, but here in Germany every beer photo looks like the one in the reference... Might be too special of a market.

[rusteberg]

Interesting about the syringe and glycerol... Here in America, our beer photos look like this:

[fixeighted]

lmao
That's all

[Joelaff]

I photographed beer large format for a number of years for magazines, outdoor, etc. Bottles were always prepped with a combination of spray and individually placed droplets. Years of testing found that a combination of glycerine and water typically made the best look. However, this would only last so long before drying out, and would not always survive a film processing run. Would prep at least 3 or more bottles. Would light with a stand-in.

I might consider making more of the drops asymmetrical. Larger droplets typically make a slight teardrop shape rather than a sphere. We would always strive to have some the drops blended together, or even to have a “run” or two where the droplets blended together into a bit of a vertical line a few mm to a cm or so long. We used to say bottles that only had a bunch of round droplets had chicken pox.

We would also frequently include slush as well. I like a hint of slush, not much, but just droplets can look a little drab. A couple pieces of slush on the neck and one or two at the base usually looks nice. Sometimes a little on the cap as well.

As for the rendering the area that pops out to me right away is right around the cap. Directly under the cap is very bright and even.

I would consider a graduation on the card behind the bottle as well, like more of a hot spot in the middle with fall off. Possibly a little hand painted variance in the card as well (or low frequency noise).

I prefer a little bit more round sculpting to the lighting as well, like on the Krombacher bottle, but I know you are going for a slightly different look.

The lights or bounce cards that are making the subtle reflections on the front of the bottle might benefit from being soft edged on one side, where they show up near the middle of the bottle. (Maybe just one of them). I find the dark stripe created by the space between those cards a little distracting.

Love the suggestion above about more variance in the glass.

An additional tiny light slightly off to one side set to add a hint of a catch light to the droplets might be nice too. Just a little ping to know they are wet and round. This is easy to over do, though. Subtlety is key.

Looks really nice. It’s easy for any of us to make suggestions, difficult to actually make something great. Keep it up.

[Karol.Osinski]

Joelaff Wow, that's one, comprehensive advice one would only find on this kind of forum. It is great to see people sharing their vast experience in order to help others.

What else I can say...I love the renders kosso_olli, though I agree that the bottle look would benefit from having only one strong highlight in the edge, both of them make it more symmetrical / less interesting. Great product renders nonetheless!

[kosso_olli]

Well, that is a lot of info, thanks for that. I might as well start all over, now.
Anyway, photographing this kind of stuff is one thing, but rendering is a different story. The amount of time you spend on placing droplets and the lighting is immense. Also, the setup is very tricky: Move the light shining on the backdrop a little too far, and all the droplets on the glass start to look really weird.
By the way, I did not invent that setup by myself. I had photo reference of the real setup on set.

[Joelaff]

Definitely an even bigger undertaking to render it. At least in the real world you don't have to build the bottle. Though in the real world you can't have a light affect only one thing, or not make highlights, etc. All the reflector cars have to be hand cut to fit behind the bottle without showing up, the lights have to be setup in such a way that they don't show up in camera, etc.

We used to spend ours placing droplets in the real world, and there is no undo... It was always very depressing to be almost done with a beautiful bottle and add one drop too many which would run into a bunch of others and fowl the whole thing. You could rarely wipe it off once you messed it up, it would smear. Best to put that one in the fridge for later and move on to the next bottle.

I think you are actually pretty close. Maybe a noise displacement modifier to rough up the droplets (or render time displacement), a few custom droplets, or runs, etc. to taste, pull on the top of some of the droplets with falloff to make them teardrop shaped (or use taper modifiers), some lighting tweaks. You could even do a lot in the post if you preferred. What you have is already better than like 80% of the commercial beer photos out there!

One major drawback to the virtual beer is that you don't get to drink it when you are done.

[francomanko]

I'm no expert on bottle product rendering, but I am an expert on beer. I

the fact you can drink Krombacher all day makes me question this

[Buck]

the fact you can drink Krombacher all day makes me question this

it's called boat beer. Low enough % you can drink all afternoon and not get smashed

[JonasNöll]

Looks great, great attention to detail, is there some updates on this?
I'm not a beer bottle expert myself, so for me intuitively somehow the drops on the side of the beer bottle look strange. It's probably because they are still placed on the green glass but they refract the white background, so they look a bit painted on for my taste, but not really sure if that would be physically accurate or not.
Other than that it's really nice to study all the tiny details and imperfections in the highres pictures, can tell a lot of work went into it.