Introduction:
My girlfriend was working in a british pub in Copenhagen last year, and we would enjoy some good beer, each had it’s own glass and one thing about british beer producers is that they have great commercials everywhere (coasters, toilet door or on the beer glass), so I was sitting and enjoy my dark ale, or whatever it was, and came up with some ideas for commercials to be added onto or inside the glass, but to visualize the idea I need a glass, with beer and a simple environment.
The tutorial will be in 3 parts
Part one: Research, modeling, shading and choice of render
Part two: Light/Shadow, Rendering to still
Part three: Animation, rendering, “postproduction”
Software: Maya, MentalRay, Quicktime.
Ok let’s get started 
Research, at any project you always have to get yourself a clear picture of your assignment. I usually use Google Images and put in search terms around the subject.
I usually make a folder where I drag reference images to, so that when I work I close my browser and other distractions and have the reference images within quick reach.
I get an impression of how other people like to show of displays of beer glasses and I really like this image for it’s camera, light, background and how the beer look:
nice image
But I want a glass like in British pubs, and due to my extensive real-life research, they look more like this:
British pub style glass
And we are even so lucky as it’s a frontal view, since a glass is basically one profile line revolved around it’s center, this will be my approach for this model.
Modeling: This is where I fire up Maya, but this tutorial will be pretty general, so any 3D package will do as long as it uses MentalRay as its render.
Always make a new project where you will store your scenes, source images, rendered images etc.
In the front view add an image plane (in the Viewport/View/Image Plane/Import Image)
Now draw a CV-curve like marked with red in this image (make sure you start and end on 0 on the y-axis).
You might have to move the control points to get the desired result, the “final” profile curve should look something like this:
Now revolve the shape, I love Polygons, not a big fan of NURBS, so my model will be revolved as polys.
Now for shading/choosing the render, the render is basically choosen by my deamnds (glass and liquid) and I’m focusing on a standard Maya package with no extra renders installed (e.g. Maxwell, V-ray etc.)
Shading:
We are using MentalRay, so MentalRay shaders are preferred (render time and tweaking)
For the glass I want to use a dielectric_material, assign it to your model, and your model turns all red, to see what we got from this I hurry up and add a simulation of a physical sky.
Ok, I’ll release this how far I’ve gotten, while writing this I got some server internal errors when uploading pictures, check back soon for the rest of part 1.