The result of a friendly challenge to render ‘something pretty’.
The bottle is based on CK-Beauty, the rest is my own work. Modelled with Blender and rendered with Yafaray 0.1.2 experimental, from Blender 2.58/9 with post processing in Blender’s compositor.
There are a couple different versions of this as I keep playing with the colour and contrast.
I rendered each light individually, and saved them as .exr files so it is really (too) easy to keep on trying different looks with the compositor.
Not bad, but a couple of things could easily be improved I think!
I think a bit more perspective on the box would have made it more heroic…
The bottle could do with having some more interesting reflections of what is behind the camera to spice it up a bit.
My biggest gripe is more fundamental: the aspect ratio/composition of the shot…
Why is it this size?
Almost all of these product shots are for a single or double page spread in a magazine and that is a strong mental image that’s hard for us to get away from… use those dimensions as an aspect ratio.
For a landscape layout your subject is right on the crease in the page!
the “rule of thirds” would really help the composition here… the bottle on the left third, the logo on the right third and the backgrond/box creating positive and negative space between left “page” and right “page”…
Michael W
I did have more defined reflections on the front of the bottle, but they seemed somehow distracting so I ‘rearranged’ them. The fuzzy highlight on the left of the bottle is from a window in an hdri. The box could probably be taller too.
You are spot on about the aspect ratio though(damn you for being so practical!), the truth is I didn’t concern myself at all with print media or final usage until the render finished, when I thought “Ooops. Oh well…”
I don’t suppose they would let me have that much white space either side on a billboard, and it won’t fit widescreen television either. Maybe we could use it for our internet campaign, or could we have a half-page ad in Cosmo? (That might work. The image is 1.36, A5 is 1.4)
The thing that scared me most was the colour cast and contrast. I thought people would complain about it being too pink, or blown out, or too soft.
(That might work. The image is 1.36, A5 is 1.4)