I've watched tutorials here, but they didn't exactly prepare me for what I'm setting out to test right now, which is smooth, semi-outdoors-y product lighting. Attached is an exactly of a nice setup for product lighting, but which is surprisingly difficult to render realistically in blender. Can anyone point to how to set this up?
Exactly like that. There is no magic to anything, just a lot of practice, experience and artistic judgement. There is no specific set up you have to drill into your head, no magic button you need to push or specific setting you have to set. The more you do stuff in Blender, the more you realize achieving a result in Blender is incredibly much simpler that you initially thought. People don't like to hear that, but in time you always end up with the realization and that's when you let go and everything becomes so much easier.
That HDRI is phenomenal, I got to look into overcast skies
