Liquid Dissolve Effect from Akira I am trying to recreate the effect in the below GIF, where blobs rise up off a surface. I've tried multiple approaches, but can't seem to find a solution. My main hope for the solution is that it be highly procedural, i.e could be applied to any kind of mesh object, and the number and density of blobs could be procedurally controlled. 



1st Approach: Metaballs



The way Metaballs blend together is promising, and I think they would work well if their max influence could be 10x larger. Fiddling with all the settings didn't give me anything nearly long enough. 

2nd Approach: Cast Modifier


The cast modifier offers a nice, procedural way of deforming a mesh to something spherical, but implementing this approach on a large scale seems tedious. 

I'm open to solutions that use animation nodes or sverchock.
Use Cycles/Experimental option
Add the Subdiv Modifier with Adaptive option to your object
Have fun with Nodes and displacement (use the Displacement only mode in the material option)


Here animating the 3 value nodes controlling respectively the color ramp, voronoi blob and noise spike textures.