Have you ever seen a water still made in Blender and thought how awesome it looked? I’m creating this thread to see who can show me the BEST fake water in Blender. NO fluid sim. :rolleyes: Here’s one I made(aka my avatar) 
P.S. .blend included…for further play. AAO turned on if disabling is wanted.
Have you ever visited the Cogfilms website. His water Tutorial is great. Have a look at some of his water rendered here: http://www.cogfilms.com/images.html
ya, dichotomy said all that was needed 
but your waters not bad, for coming up with it yourself…but it’s just not like cogs
Here’s some water I did a long while ago for the CGSphere site…
http://www.overclock.net/gallery/data/500/medium/Cryosapien.png
I do believe that all water made with blender is fake… 
I believe that the best non-fluid-sim water I’ve seen made with blender so far is the one created for the short film “lighthouse” using a FFTW3 based patch. (The patch is undergoing review and will hopefully be merged into the source tree soon)
@Neobloodline: The texture looks awesome but if the sphere was half in the water makes it more realistic.
@Fishb8: Yeah I heard some things bout’ that. Nice “fake” non fluid sim water by the way. 
I don’t think CGSphere permits you to move the location of the sphere from where it is in the stock scene.
To submit a CGSphere entry to the respective website you have to follow a few rules.
That’s correct! and… that’s what makes it a fun challenge. You have to use a similar size and shape (sphere duh lol ) and also camera. So basically it’s a texturing/ composition / idea test. It’s great! Also you must use the backdrop, lines and all and are only allowed to texture it.
Well… This material works way better with a fluid sim. But I tried to get it to work better without a fluid sim…
So here’s the result.
Edit: Crap! I put a low quality version up. Fixed it
Cogfilms has always impressed me, it aims at simulating so close to the real world…
But I think you can still see it’s comic like look…
The lighthouse water is extremely impressive, so my vote would be for that…
I still like the Cog water better, but it’s just not that realistic in terms of shading…
When you do water materials for me there are two rules:
One: Stucci texture MUST be used(unless I’m experimenting)
Two: Nor must be enabled and it must have a value of 25.00.
Actually using clouds as the texture could be used for better effect especially for oceans.
Sorry, I should have made it clear, that is not my rendering. That was a rendering to demo the feature in the patch-tracker submitted by broken.
There is an animated rendering of it somewhere as well. The still is good, but you really get an idea of just how realistic it is when you see it in motion. 
Edit: Found the short animation clip of the ocean sim - http://www.promotionstudios.com/files/ocean/ocean7.mov
Like Cyborg Dragon said, a clouds texture does work better; stucci is better for simulating, well, stucco or other similar wall textures (correct me if I’m wrong). And a normal value of 25?? That’s a bit too high in my opinion.
@CD: Sometimes (most of the time) I use Clouds.
