Making realistic looking water is always difficult, no matter what rendering package you use. If you use Autodesk’s 3ds Max, however, you might want to check out a new tutorial on CGTuts+ by Evan Schaible that demonstrates a great way to do it.
Randall Hand
Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.