animated water surface

Description

Here is a basic plane mesh to which has been added Alpha, Roughness, a blue Tint and UV Animation. It gives the basic impression of flowing, rippling water. The "water" is mostly transparent in this thumbnail image... You will want to experiment especially with the Mask Threshold and Mask Softness sliders in order to get just the right amount of visibility vs. transparency. Experiment with your X and Y animation speeds. You will also get better results if you place several instances of the plane LAYERED ON TOP OF EACH OTHER, especially with the angle of their currents at different angles and scales. For example, large scale on the plane below, and increasing smaller scale on the plane(s) above it. In some areas I have used up to FOUR layers of the plane over each other. Consider placing a single flat plane using a STANDARD + TRANSPARENT shader tinted light blue over (or under) the animated planes. (See thumbnail #2 here for that effect) Try it! The thumbnail here doesn't show the animation, of course. The layers of "water" are shown over a sand object for effect here. The experiments here are admittedly a little "quick 'n' dirty". I will leave it to you to make more convincing scenes!