bunch of questions about my projects, relater to texturing and render

[bardiaheshmati]

I’m having this project with a company that i have to make an animation for them, i’ve started learning blender for this project and i’m still consider myself very noob in blender specially in terms of texturing and uv mapping .
i’ve rendered this shot just now and i still think it’s not exactly what i want.

Note 1: i’m using texture and bump for the ocean because blender ocean simulator is just killing ram and i can’t get it done for the big scale ocean like this , is there anyway (or other ways) to make the ocean look real !?

i have underwater scene which i don’t exactly know how i should make it look real. but i’m still trying , i’m having a very hard time getting the volume texture for under water scene.

the other issue i have is the boat trails, currently i’m using an static image that looks like a trail but it’s an animation and the trail is static which makes no sense! what are the other options to create this trail ?? !

i accept any comment , suggestion & criticism so please shoot !

Attachments

[riveter]

For the boat trail, could you parent a wavy mesh to the boat? It would be static, but may look alright from a distance.

[magick.crow]

You read to add grunge to all the ships and stuff. I would make layered bump maps for the waves. The wakes look static from the air so just add big V wakes behind everything. Posts in the water create standing waves.