Sea Foam (procedural, faked and explained)

[djnoone]

Here is a final composition:
In the next post, i will explain the process of making the foam-like texture, what works and when it works.

[djnoone]

You need a proper geometry (liquid drops) and an appropriate background - sea or rock, otherwise, the liquid will stay odd. The "foam" needs a contrast background to reflect and to refract. My drops were created by real flow and i did them in three phases - a basic level of water, a splash, and a "cloud" of tiny spheres, but the material is the same on all. If you cannot generate, probably should search on sketchfab.com or thangs.com
1. Create basic liquid (w1.jpg)
2. Put a label on the liquid with plastic material. You need a white somewhat reflective surface on the water surface (metal is just too much, so you can go with either Paint or plastic)
3. You need these white portions to be uneven and wavy. So the way i approached this is by creating two procedural textures. The first is almost like a noise - the spots shader - made with little and bigger dots (my numbers are in the screenshot) - (w2.jpg)
4. Then you need another bigger texture - that of the noise Fractal shader. But because the fractal is somewhat gradient and not contrast enough i put a Color to number node after it so i can make it like this (w3.jpg)
5. These two patterns are combined via the Color Composite node and as a combination they are put into opacity of the material (paint or plastic as mentioned point 2.)
(w4.jpg)

The full setup is on (w.jpg).
I will try to upload them in the described order:

[DMerz III]

WOW! Great breakdown - thanks for sharing - foam/bubbles in CG is something I'm constantly amazed by

[Josh3D]

Nicely done! Great method. Love how simple it is and how effective it looks.

[designgestalt]

this is an awesome trick!!!
thanks for sharing !!

well done !

cheers
designgestalt