This is a high quality model of a Lava Lamp. This is photo-realistic with mostly procedural textures. There are sub-surf modifiers that are not applied to allow low-poly to high-poly work flows. The Lava is made of Metaballs that interact with each other fluidly. The Metaballs can be tweaked for the desired look. This has it's own lamp, that interacts with the Lava.

This is designed for close-up work, but can be down-rez'd for wide-shots.

This contains two .blends: one that has the particle system and wind physics, and the second that has the particles baked into objects. The particle version can be edited at will, while the baked version can be scaled and edited using the keyframed actions.

The background scene was quick and dirty just for the previews.