Create a wispy, foamy top? Like Hot Cocoa?

Question

I'm trying to create a mug of hot cocoa in Blender, and right now I'm trying to perfect the fluid itself.

Here's a better picture of what I'm trying to create:

I'm trying to create this bubbly, foamy top layer to the cocoa, but I'm not sure where to start. YouTube tutorials show people commonly just use a texture as the top, but I'd like to recreate the effect completely in blender.

I might even add some whipped cream eventually, but I'm taking it slow. I know how to do the marshmallows, I'm just trying to figue out how to create the top layer.

related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56645/texture-not-realistic — , Jan 30 '17 at 20:59
Possible duplicate of How to make foam with bubbles (beer, bath) — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Jan 31 '17 at 01:00

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:57

I made a quick render of what you described. Here I essentially have a whole lot of bubbles on the surface of a rectangle, which is basically what the froth is. You could increase the number, size, etc of the bubbles easily, my computer just can't handle more than this :)

To make the large bubbles, I made a single sphere, and colored it a semi-transparent brown color. Next I duplicated it a few times and used the random transform tool object>transform>randomize transform as seen here

Next I made one small sphere into a group and used the particle tool (great post on that here) to scatter them randomly across the surface. The post I mentioned show how to use the options to make the bubbles smaller, make more, etc.

I recognize that this doesn't look exactly like hot cocoa, but if you just color the bubbles a bit differently, adding some more white and a bit of dark brown it'll be pretty close.

Create a wispy, foamy top? Like Hot Cocoa?

1 Answers1