Nescafe Espresso Commercial

Nescafe Espresso belongs to Nestle’s Nescafe coffee range, and its television commercial goes in close: a glass cup filmed at macro scale, a droplet rising and falling back into the crema, the brand mark resolving over the top. CG product visualization, liquid and steam simulation and compositing carry the sequence.

Liquid at this magnification exposes everything. A crema is not one material but three — dark coffee underneath, a foam layer of countless bubbles that have to be born, drift and burst on their own timing, and a droplet whose splash and rebound must obey surface tension rather than an artist’s guess. Steam sits on top as a separate simulation, soft enough to feel warm and never so heavy that it reads as smoke. Add glass with its refraction and edge highlights, a depth of field shallow enough to sell the scale, and motion graphics to bring the logo on cleanly, and a few seconds of coffee becomes a sustained simulation and compositing exercise. It is exactly the kind of product work Terminal FX takes on for advertising.