Suggestions for doing large body of water?

I have a scene on an island and want the water to look body of water-ish.
Fluid sim could do it, but it might be overkill simply to establish the water AS water.

I’m trying to imagine some other things I could do to show that there are waves in the water, maybe… in Lightwave, you have the ability to use a wave shader make a surface look “wavy” in the sense that it actually deforms the surface, and the waves can move in a direction of your choice, etc…

Can blender do this?

Are there any other tricks or cheats anyone can suggest.

I’m going to be setting up a number of shots: distant, close to the island, some perhaps near water’s surface next to the island, so that might be a case for when to use fluid sim to show the water swelling and receding in relation to the island mass…’

thanks for any ideas!

rc

you can add a wave modfiier
only thing is that theses wave don’t iteract with objects in water!
but should still look nice!
show us some poc of what you have!

for good tut on water see following tut from COG

Cog ocean underwater / Bsoc material
http://www.cogfilms.com/tutorials.html
http://www.cogfilms.com/CQTs-3.html #’ Surface tension

happy 2.5

I was going to suggest the COG tutorial.

Slightly off topic…
But, I was watching Salt the other week, and where she jumps out of the heli at the end, I realised just how fractalised the waters’ surface did look, even though it was real (I think)

Something like this ? http://www.vimeo.com/16689914

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php/201899-Wild-Ocean-Fluid-Dynamics-Simulation?highlight=ocean
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php/201238-Funding-Drive-for-Ocean-Simulation-Procedural-Texture-patch-for-2.5?highlight=ocean

would be nice to see this in 2,5

any idea if it is comng soon and if this would require a special built to work with ?

happy 2.5

yeah. exactly like that…if I could get something like what’s in the vimeo clip it would be the bee’s knees.

that is really beautiful.

rc