I take it that Blender internal texture can be animated. Like Cloud texture can be used to create animated wave reflection. What do you key frame for this effect, which field?
Almost all the fields of blender textures can be animated so the choice of the animated field will depend on which effect you want to get.
Perhaps if your texture looks good enough and you just want it to move, you just need to keframe one of the offset field (X, Y, or Z) in the mapping area.
You could also add an empty, and then for your texture mapping choose object instead of generated and add the empty as the object. You can move (or scale) the texture by moving (or scaling) the empty.
I knew about translating Blender textures. There are number of tutorials out there. But they all show texture sliding on the plane; a same pattern just moving across. They are not moving up and down like a water surface.
Moving up and down…, and then it hit me. Blender texture pattern do animate, change patterns, if you move it out of plane in Z direction! Ya it works.
Here is a cool tuto to create a water surface with textures. The result
Just bumps are used but you can use displacements too.
Thanks for the link. I did see this tutorial before. But some how I just simply missed key framing in Z axis!