“Motion texture animation of water surface” by Tomita and Tsuruno

We present a new method for making wave animation from still water image. In our method, users can control the behavior of wave in the water surface intuitively and interactively. After we simulate the wave using a Spectral Method [Tessendorf 1999], we have the water surface corresponding to the projection system of static images. Previous works for animating water surface. Chuang et al [Chuang and Goldman 2005] proposed a method for generating an animating of picture using displacement mapping and warping, however, those methods are only effective for gentle and calm water surfaces. Contrarily, our method is adaptively used for large scale waves of water height field.

Chuang, Y.-Y., and Goldman, D. B. 2005. Animating Pictures with Stochastic Motion Textures. In Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 25, 3 (July), 853–860. Google ScholarDigital Library
Tessendorf, J. 1999. Simulating Ocean Water. SIGGRAPH Simulating Nature Realistic and Interactive Techniques Course Notes, 47.Google Scholar