A Render With A Message

Hey creative souls! Welcome back to my blog.

I’ll be honest—these blogs have been feeling a bit repetitive lately since I’ve been caught up with some work. But don’t worry, something exciting is coming soon, so just wait for it!

Today, I’m sharing a 3D wine bottle model I made back in February 2023. I don’t exactly remember why I chose to create this particular piece, but nevertheless, once I started, I got really into it.

The Creative Process

For this project, I challenged myself to rely mostly on shaders instead of heavy texturing. The only textures I used were:

• A cloth texture for the table

• A label texture for the bottle

Everything else was achieved using shaders, which was a great learning experience for me!

A Message That Matters

One thing I was very clear about—I didn’t want to promote drinking. In fact, I’m strictly against drinking and smoking. So, I searched for a meaningful quote to include in the design. That’s when I found this powerful line:

“You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no.”

This quote really resonated with me, so I decided to place it on the bottle label.

Adding the Finishing Touches

Initially, my scene only had a wine bottle and a glass, but it felt incomplete. I decided to add lights to enhance the composition.

At the time, I didn’t know the shortcut for aligning lights along a curve, so I manually copied and pasted each light one by one. It took a long time, but in the end, the effort was worth it.

For this project, I used preset shaders available in AI Standard because I had just learned about them and wanted to apply my new knowledge. I also experimented with multiple textures to showcase different looks for the final render.

Final Result

Here’s a look at some of the work-in-progress shots:

And this is the final render:

This project may have been a simple learning experiment, but it taught me a lot about shaders, lighting, and texturing. Nevertheless, I’m glad I pushed myself to create something meaningful instead of just a generic wine bottle render.

That’s all for today’s blog! Let me know—have you ever created something just for the sake of learning? How did it turn out?

See you in the next one!