Bacardi redesigned their bottle to have a more “craft spirits” feel and appeal to bartenders; sorry, I mean “mixologists”… Nobody’s a bartender anymore, that’s like so 2010. This campaign also brings up the Cuban roots of the brand. I was tasked with look dev and lighting of the bottles, the heroes of the spot. I asked myself why would we spend the resources creating a set of photorealistic bottles rather than shoot them on set and get a great look right away. As it turns out, the art direction wanted to be able to work with the camera in post, and I was expected to create the labels for multiple countries since this was an international release. With this in mind, 3D was definitely more practical. The challenge was in the camera move. From a full frame zoom in to the bat logo. I had to create very high resolution textures and resort to projections to some extent. Vray did a great job with the glass effects. The table is also cg. This was done at A52.