Phase alone doesn't do a very good job of simulating water in my opinion.
You'll get better results by averaging patterns and moving them in
different directions.  You can include phase with the averaged patterns.

You really should use normals for creating your water surface.  The reason
it looks bad is that the official POV doesn't take angle into account for
calculating reflection.  You will get much better results using Mike
Paul's wyzPOV, which you can get at http://twysted.net.  It's also
included in the superpatch, minus the total internal reflection ( the part
that makes prisms act as a mirror).

Some pattern suggestions:  Try a gradient pattern for getting the look of
waves on the shoreline. Bumps looks good for farther out waves.  Try the
bumps traveling a little along the y axis too to get more variation to the
waves.

Tim Soderstrom wrote:

> Wow that was quick :) Thanks for the help! ONE more thing, if you can
> help me (I forgot to mention this after I posted it). the Pov-Ray DOC
> (thank God for it) mentions about phasing pigments and such. However,
> I'm having a problem doing it. I've done it before, but it wasn't fast
> enough, so I upped the clock value:
>
> sphere{
>  <0, 0, 0>
>  15
>  pigment{
>   bozo
>   color_map{
>   [0 rgb <1, 1, 1>]
>   [1 rgb <0, 0, 0>]
>   }
>  phase (clock*4)
>  }
> }
>
> but the AVI didn't show much. What I am wondienrg is how to properly
> achive something like a realistic water texture (using a pigment and
> *NOT* normal, as the reflection of objects goes to crap) that
> ripples....
>
> Thanks again for your help, hope I'm not being too annoying :)
>
> Tim Soderstrom
>

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