Hi,
I tried to light a glass. Unfortunately, with my first attempt, it looks very flat. I added an HDRI, but it didn’t make it look more realistic.
Then I changed the lighting, but it looks strange…
Do you have any ideas for good and realistic lighting? I want it to be as bright as possible.
Sven
You have too many light sources, you have a basic 3-point light and a bounce light and you through in an HDRI…all of that adds up to FLAT lighting
Adding an HDRI is fine as long as you add the proper one for your scene, so in this setup, I would pick an interior scene without many things that could cause distracting reflections…
As stated in this video, the materials will make the scene. If your materials aren’t correct, lighting doesn’t help make it look better.
and this one…
Thanks for the videos. I’ve seen both (I watched them before I created the post). Maybe my material is the problem… I don’t know. 
Here’s the link to my file:
Light Test.blend (2.3 MB)
OK…I just took a look at your file…
Most of the problems are from the Bottle Geometry and how you did the fluid.
Normally for reality renders you would take the Bottle add thickness, and duplicate the inner wall reducing the size to fit just inside the inner bottle. Cap the top and raise the outermost edge for some adhesion to the inner glass. Then add your materials, one for Glass and one for fluid (oversimplified explanation, but I think you can understand it…as in your case you had the inner bottle as your fluid so it was the same material as the bottle with IOR the same, which lead to problems in the refractions…
There were some weird reflections due to the metallic ring and platform and the refractions were making it look like the bottle was duplicated in one section… Here is a quick version changing the lights just a bit removing the soft panels, and adding a rim light. I still used your bottle as it was but separated the interior and added in a duplicate material but with fluid IOR.
So with what you currently have and just tweaking the bottle and lighting you can get something you will like better than the current render…
