Researching Water Ripples and Glowing particles

I'm still tweaking and changing my trailer script but one moment in my original script shows the characters entering into the Void.  I wanted to create a water ripple effect for this moment.  It's always helpful to look at how our people approach these things because you want to be efficient about what you are creating. 

Personally I was looking for a particle dynamics version because I was looking at adding a glow effect across the surface as it ripples.  There might be other solutions for this, but I haven't found them yet.

These Tutorials use nCloth or Nurbs surfaces.  







Autodesk Help explains how to use a Wave Deformer which is another nurbs surfaces option.

Another option is to look at real flow, although I feel this would be an overkill solution when simpler methods are available.  It would however give me both a particle system and water ripples. 

Alternatively Maya has a couple of particle options- basic and nParticles.  I've used them here and there over the last couple of years but haven't really played around with them.  

This tutorial could possibly be combined with the nCloth water ripple since they both use  nCloths.  Might be worth a try to see what happens if particles are emitted from a water ripple, although they might just go crazy. 



Glowing particles are so pretty :)  You either add glow in Maya or in post-production.  There are tutorials out there on how to do this in Aftereffects.  Nuke also has particle dynamics but I've never used them.

I'm going to focus on finalizing my script before I get too stuck into playing with effects but I do like to have a nice collection of information handy for once I get to that point.  Or to play with when i need a breather from writing, but still need to do something constructive.