Floating Boat Animation

[jajawong]

I am a new 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/OpenGL 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.