First off, sorry it's a Maya PLE render. My new PC is still in construction, so I'm stuck with using a buddy's PC for a while.

Anyway, here's a studio render set up that I think works real well. The detergent bottles were just a quick 2 minute model to have something simple to render, so don't focus on the modeling. The studio set-up took some time to tweak. It might surprise some of you to know that this is a Maya software render, with no final gather or global illumination. It's just a bunch of lights and reflection planes placed in the right spots. Also, there's a lot going on with the decay rates etc. I basically have been reading up a lot on lighting, and have picked up many tips from various different tutorials out there on the web. This one little scene has taught me an immense amount about lighting and shadow, and I recommend anyone doing a project like this to really get to know what all the features in Maya actually do. I never really knew up until now just how important lighting is to a scene. I used to think that a realistic render was maybe 80% modeling skills, and 20% lighting/rendering. But now I realize that the model itself is maybe 10% important to the final image.

Comments are welcome, as always.