Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=31057&Start=37&Artist=Alleycat169&ByArtist=Yes

Here's a good example of how to do it. Basically I use a lot of terrain models to get this effect. To make a simple ripple on terrain simply create a terrain and enter the terrain editor. Use the "blob" button to create a mound that fills the frame. Using the Airbrush, adjusting the altitude of the brush to zero and making your brush size slightly smaller than the original mound, "paint" the center of the mound to lower it to zero. You should now have what looks like a crater. Raise the altitude of the brush and reduce the size slightly. Paint another mound in the center of the crater and repeat the lowering step to hollow it out. Repeat this until you have made several rings within each other. That will be your smooth ripple effect. For the splash, create another terrain and repeat the first two steps. This time you want to click on the erode buttom to create some ridges and jagged edges. This will be your splash. Use the terrain clipping feature to chop off the square edges, or group with a negative boolean. To get an angled splash, exit the editor and rotate your splash terrain by 45 degrees and stretch it. Now rotate it back until the base is even with the water plane. The "cone' should now angle out of the water. Place within your smooth ripple and texture both to match your water plane. Duplicate the cone and stretch it a bit higher and add a cloud texture like "cotton ball 2" to add some mist. Create a couple of dozen small spheres and disperse them around the cone using the 3D, size disperse to create errant splashes. After I've rendered I usually play around the splash some more in Photoshop with a smudge tool to get rid of hard edges and add "white caps". It's a lot of work but the effect looks great. the most important thing to remember is "have fun" and experiment until you are happy with the result. good luck.