So, I got that animated surf to work, and at the right size–by golly, did MAX ever not want to cooperate with me on that one; it gets pretty particular about adding morphing splines to use as bones…specifically where they are on the timeline when you add them to the Skin modifier!–and I’d say it looks pretty good…
…but there are some bits that are missing, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to do 'em.
I tried with metaparticles,which looked pretty good, but either the effect was monstrously huge, or I make the particles smaller and end up needing so many more of them to have the right density, and my computer goes all, “Nope, nope, nope, nope…!”, especially using the water itself as a deflector (would it be better to fake it with a plane deflector?)
Is there a way to do this that doesn’t make the computer wig out because it’s so processoriintensive that you can’t preview the effect even at 10% visible, never mind trying to render it…?