Floating Boat Animation

[jajawong]

I am a beginner of 3D Animation and I need your help.
Floating Boat Animation is actually my final year project.
The software pakage I am going to use is 3D studio max, and Java for the 3D programming.
As I have to demonstrate 4 types of boat and 4 types of background(e.g. river across a city or river across a forest), I want to know how you guys model the floating motion of the object and let user to control the floating motion by increasing the speed of the wave? I really don't know how they move in the real life.How can I do?

Also, do you have any comment on the software and programming language or anything you want to let me know? pls feel free to leave a message here.

[Breakfast]

I would start by going somewhere with boats and watching how they move on waves. Then look into the mathematics/physics/hydrodynamics of how waves behave. You are a student, your university library will contain a huge amount of information, more than you will appreciate until years after your graduation- use it. Do some research. That is what you are being tested on, not your ability to use internet bulletin boards.

It is easy enough to import models from 3d studio into Java3D,  but getting the behaviour of the waves just right will be much more of a challenge so start by worrying about that.

As a general rule, the more specific the questions you ask the better the answers you will get- "how do I do my project" will get you ignored, more descriptive  "I have a triangleStripArray that I need to animate based on the following function..." type questions are likely to get detailed and in depth responses.