Modelling realistic water

Now that I have the layout of my harbor I have to create water for the surrounding islands. To do this I used a very simple technique using a plane. First I created a plane and then opened the material editor. In the material editor I go to the maps tab and add a bump tab to my material.

Once I did this I add my bitmap image to the material. For this I click on the bump tab and add my bitmap. I loaded a preset material from 3ds max for my water and then tweaked the settings. Once I have loaded the preset material I go to the tiling setting and change it to 2.0. Once I did this I go to the additional bump tab and add another normal bump, you can see this in the image to the right. I repeat this procedure two more times and every time doubling the tiling, so from 2.0 to 4.0 until it reaches 8.0. 

Once I did this I added my water material to my plane and had a look to see how it was looking.

   As you can see from the image to the left my plane is now starting to look like water, however it does not have a reflection like water usually does. To get a good water reflection I go back to the maps tab and add a reflection map. As you can see from the top left image I added a raytrace to my reflection map to add a shine to my reflection. 

Once I did this I created a sphere to go round my water. I did this as the sphere will be my sky which is reflected on by the water. To do this I created a sphere around my water and then added a normal modifier to it which flips it inside out. Once I did this I added a sky material to the sphere which I loaded from the presets. Once I completed this I rendered out my water to see what it looked like. As you can see from the image to the right my water is looking very realistic. Once I did this I added it to Pearl Harbor environment.