How to create procedurally generated surface bubbles on a liquid I am trying to procedurally generated surface bubbles on coffee. I know that you can use a UV map to do this, but I'd like to have more control. There is a nice demo of doing this with animation is 3ds Max, but I haven't worked out a way to do it in Blender.

http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/1878-creating-and-animating-bubbles-3ds-max-misc-by-alvaro-moreira-particle-flow-frost

I have tried using metaballs, but without much success. Here is the look I'd like simulate.
The new microdisplacment feature can help with that. Here is a simple node setup as a proof of concept:



After duplicating this effect a couple of time you can obtain that: