Wiskey Bottle & Glass

My take on the famous Jack Daniel’s Whiskey, Gentleman Jack. This render was created solely for portfolio purposes and has no commercial intent. The bottle was beautifully crafted, showcasing an impressive whiskey hue.

Rendering whiskey — or any colored drink — adds another layer of difficulty compared to clear glass. The liquid isn’t just transparent; it has its own color absorption (how light loses certain wavelengths as it passes through) and scattering (how light bounces inside the liquid). To make it look real, you need volumetric shading, which simulates how light travels through the depth of the drink, picking up that warm amber tone.
Refraction still matters, because the glass and the liquid bend light differently, and both create their own highlights and distortions. Reflections are more complex too — the surface of the liquid can catch light in a softer, more diffused way than the glass around it. If you skip these details, the whiskey can look flat, like colored water, instead of rich and dense.
The main challenges are:

• Matching real‑world color depth so the drink looks full‑bodied, not see‑through like tea.
• Balancing glass and liquid refractions so they don’t distort each other unnaturally.
• Controlling volumetric noise — the more light bounces inside, the longer the render times.

Even in photography, getting whiskey to look right requires careful backlighting and color control — in 3D, you have to recreate all of that physics by hand.