First off, thanks for responding! I really appreciate it.

-Joverall22: Yes this is in mental ray, and no, I don't have any noise or blur attributed to that material. Bottom left is a splash over. as for a light source, i have an hdri dome for the scene lighting, and a spot light with no intensity, but it is emitting caustic photons. I'll try to post my render settings after the rest of my classes today.

-Next Design: originally i thought that as well. however, i did animate the real flow mesh, so when i scrubbed back my timeline to before the glass was full, and did a render, i was also getting the artifacts in the empty glass.

i want to try to put this in my demo reel, but i think i'm going to have to toy with the viscosity of the mesh in real flow again... its looking kind of jello-y lol. but first i have to get this distortion figured out.