I was wondering if people are using the newfangled(V7) metawater & water editor. It was one of the main reasons I got the upgrade, sounded so exciting. I like the sea and the prospect of making good seascapes sounded great. But I find it didnt live up to expectation. I dont want to moan here, I'm trying to see if I can suggest improved ways to achieve some aspects and whether people would find a use for my suggestions. At this stage I'm only talking about the coast foam aspect. At the moment foam is generated based on 'distance to object below'.  This doesnt always give me satisfactory results becuase : -You need to rely on the terrain itself. Currently you either see the abrupt square edges (or any edges if minimum of terrain was clipped in the terrain editor) or you need to have the ground plane(with same material assigned to it) touching the terrain which may not be OK for other areas of the image - hard to have foam near steep cliffs - the edge of the foam where the water intersects the terrain is always very sharp and completely covered in foam(because that's where the distance to object below is the smallest). I think there should be more variations. - I find it hard to chose the right 'typical depth', but that may just be my incompetence. I always felt the need for a method that depends on the position of the coast line itself regardless of the terrain underwater, seems more intuitive and hopefully easier practically. So, I have a method to do coast foam which does not rely on the distance to the object below. It makes use of the hightfiled of the terrain, which at the moment needs manual manipulation in program like photoshop/gimp etc to produce a mask. (Not complicated, my knowledge of 2d programs is very minimal). The mask is then incorporated in a modified meta-water node, and Bob's your uncle! Attached is my first more or less successfull result. It still needs improving but you can get the general idea. Of course it could be that this is obvious/trivial to anyone else, or noone else is that offended by the coasts not looking right:) In that case I'll just use my method myself. Otherwise I'll make a little tutorial and provide the metanode. At some future point, if I didnt get bored, I may automate it using python so one doesnt need to craete the mask manually in Photoshop.

Oh - I should point out that you can still use the water editor to control the waves and foam on the waves.

Disclaimer: I'm not always very relyable, so dont be disappointed if I abondon this project in the middle, it all depends on life the universe and everything:)

"I paint that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
Man Ray, modernist painter
http://artpearl.redbubble.com/