How do you create water surface without plug-ins?

[Sam Moulton]

fractal noise.

There’s a bit in the Adobe book Studio Techniques and Chris Zwar did a tut where he showed a water example.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/fractal_noise/index.html

[Brian Charles]

Wave world can create fluid motion with wave dynamics. Two producer points, two wave types. Waves can create interference patterns.

Using a layer source for Ground you can have the waves react to an obstacle using the layers luminance values.

You can even animate the ground layer up to the surface to generate custom waves.

[Delete]

if you’re not opposed to shooting some in house stuff, there are some fabulous tricks possible with a pan/tub of water, compressed air hose and over-cranking. It’ll be something you can use for ions to come. comping practicles never loses its impact.

[Ken Latman]

Thanks for everyone’s help. I did try some fractal noise tests that worked a little better. The Wave Warp looks ok, but just not quite the results I want. I examined the tutorial on the cow using wave warp an caustics but I didn’t want the water to appear directly above like the example. The Wave Warp effect appears to be a little tricky for me in this case. Are there any examples using Wave Warp and fractal noise? I’m not getting the ideal ebb and flow of ocean currents that I would like.
There was a great stock footage example on istockphoto.com. The site is having problems it seems like right now, or I would contain the link.

I have someone in my group rendering a Bryce file that might work.