[Mihai]

I think I got them to render without those artifacts because I used the exact same poly mesh to make the liquid as I did for the glass. I think you mentioned you modelled in Rhino so Rhino subdivided the meshes differently, thus making these little gaps which Maxwell takes under consideration.

[Mihai]

That might be because of Cinema's smoothing issue....I didn't do anything special, just duplicated part of the glass geometry and made a top.

[Frances]

Max does the same thing to imported nurbs. It would be too much hassle to try and get identical meshes for a result that isn't correct anyway. I mean, do a lathe then clone it, split it and cap the liquid and tweek the top for the capillary effect. Toi toi. Please don't anyone offer a tutorial for an alternative - it makes my head hurt just to think of the wasted effort.

[added]
One thing I noticed in my coplanar render is that in the places where MW picked up the red liquid, the optical effect is correct - but only because MW chose to render the red over the clear in that spot.