Hey guys,

Recently, I've been doing a lot of work for Baird and Associates...and now they have a huge project for me. An animation for a $1.2 billion dollar project and they want a nice animation.

I've done animations for them before, but this one they want the 'wow' factor. One of the things they wanted added was nice boat wakes...or at least somewhat convincing ones. Now, bear in mind that the water will not be just a plane...I'll be using an open ocean node...nothing too crazy in wave size, but it IS the ocean.

Any ideas/tutorials on how to accomplish the following?

1. Nice boat wake.

2. Water that changes color near shore (ala...turns white...'distance to object below?'...I lost that tutorial...but I think this application could work)

3. Waves with water caps...aka the white color peak of a wave (could I maybe use an invisible plane obove the open ocean terrain with a similar function to 'distance to object below'?

4.  Animated caustics for underwater.  Part of the animation is above water...looking at a port....but for a 5 second amount of time we dip below water level to look at the breakwater.  I'd like caustics to show here.  I'll likely turn the spotlight with the caustic gel on just before hitting water level and then turn it off right after emerging again.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I basically have the weekend to figure these 4 things out. Again, ANY direction would be appreciated. I really want to wow these guys.

-Ryan Spaulding
 VueRealism.Com