Creating realistic water effects, such as reflection and refraction can all be handled by using Hitfilm’s Caustic Effect. If you are familiar with After Effects, the caustic effect is similar to Ae’s in a lot of ways, subtracting the fact that all of HitFilm’s plugins are GPU accelerated right across the board.
The Caustic effect can be used to turn a still image of an ocean, into a vibrant, realistic animation of an ocean. Walking through that process is Mike Miller, who covers the basics for the plugin and shows how to use it to make water come alive in your composite.
The effect can be used in a number of different ways, including glass or any other refraction type of effect. It can also be used to create flags or cloaking effects too.