You had us at craft beer. This was a fun little project produced for a local brewing company where we took their amazing 2D can artwork and re-purposed it into high-quality 3D product renderings for marketing purposes.
Utilizing provided 2D label artwork files, we were asked to produce photo-realistic beer can 3D package renderings for The Great Northern Brewing Company. We love craft beer and we love great designs so it should come as no surprise that we were very much looking forward to working on this project.
After thoroughly sampling the product..."cough sound"...I mean discussing our clients needs in full detail, we began the construction of the 12oz beer can 3D model. This was a fairly straightforward modeling process with the exception of the pull tab which required a bit more attention to detail.
Once we had the 3D model fully designed with the label artwork mapped accurately, we then began working on preview quality renderings to present to the client. The beer can had multiple finishes so lighting the design required a high level of control and flexibility to make sure reflections and highlights were stylistically sufficient. Too many highlights and the artwork would be "blown out". Too few, and the materials wouldn't look realistic. Ultimately, we set up a highly flexible post production workflow that enabled us to control specific highlight placement and intensity all after final renderings were completed.
Once we nailed down the look on the initial can, we then were able to apply our setup to the remaining can designs and produce consistent high-quality renderings across the entire product line. We never actually got a chance to sample the product, but we can imagine that these designs are as refreshing as the beer probably tastes.