Beach

[Dune]

Ask Hannes what could have caused that 

[j meyer]

Roflmao!

[Hannes]

Not bad for my age, huh? 

[archonforest]

Wonder what happened when u were 18

[Luc]

Really convincing 

luc

I don't know about these sundried areas, didn't do that on purpose, so perhaps a happy accident. In this iteration I softened the foam mask a bit, and did some other things to it.  I think it's a little better again.
Soft shadows, but not enough samples for grainfree softness, I guess.

[Hannes]

Wonder what happened when u were 18

[Hannes]

Enough!!!!!!!

[yossam]

Hoser...................

[choronr]

I don't know about these sundried areas, didn't do that on purpose, so perhaps a happy accident. In this iteration I softened the foam mask a bit, and did some other things to it.  I think it's a little better again.
Soft shadows, but not enough samples for grainfree softness, I guess.

This is the best example of shore foam I've ever seen. Through the shadows and highlights, the thickness of the foam stands out beautifully.

[choronr]

I know, but I'm not giving away everything just like that. I've spent an awful lot of time in getting to grips with TG and it's my job.

In view of your 'food parable' it would be like serving a meal, but you don't have a clue about what your eating 

But I might put together a simple setup for the idea (might).

(might) is a good thing.

[Jo Kariboo]

Excellent again Ulco !   

[Dune]

I am trying a different setup today, thought out tonight. Here's a short TUTORIAL. Basically it's very simple: you need a mask (SSS or blue nodes) with a soft sea end and a harder coastal end, defining the basic distance between waves. Those can be broken up by (foam) fractals, and stacked and displaced up, using a color adjust shader between stacking for amount of foam, a transform shader for shifting each wave into sea a bit further. Then warp the whole lot (or warp the initial mask) and finally add a reflective shader from a total sea mask (covering the whole ocean with a soft edge), extending a bit onto the sand. The opposite of that (also warped, of course) sea mask is the dry area mask, for dry sand and (shifted inland or covered by another mask) higher ground, such as dunes or mountains). You need a sand color and a (masked) sea color just before getting the foam in. See... simple 

[oldm4n]

the last two ones are beautiful, especially the one on the previous page : the tree shadows on the beach add a very cool mood in the image

[Hannes]

Thanks a lot for your tutorial, Ulco! So did I get that right? Everything is terrain?

[Dune]

Yep. Isn't that funny? But you can put it on a water plane, I expect, and have the real terrain duck where it needs to get deeper.
The good thing about it being terrain is that the reflectivity  and waves are not diving under or up from the beach in unwanted areas. And underwater colors can be faked, faster to render as well, no hard calculations, you know. Only if you want 'real transparency', you need something else.