I have developed a new way to make "Fake Transparent Water".
I have altered the water shader by using a merge shader to combine the water shader with an image shader.
1.The image shader is used to overlay a "through the camera" version of the scene without any water or other
objects, as illustrated in the top image. I found a POV I liked and then rendered the first image. I then made some minor modifications to this image ie... caustics and saved it.
2. The merge shader is used to combine the water shader with the image created earlier. The water shader is plugged into the input port of the merge shader, and the image shader into the shader "A" port. I left all of the merge settings to their default except for the "Mix to A" setting which I set to .2 this can be adjusted, the higher this number the more the image will show through.
This technique works well with still images it made be too cumbersome for animations, as every change in the camera position would require a new image.
Hope this information is helpful. Enjoy!
