New beginner : Floating boat animation

:confused: I am a new beginner of 3D Animation and I need your help.
Floating Boat Animation is actually my final year project.
I am going to use 3D studio max for the 3D graphics, and Java for the 3D programming.

I have to demonstrate the floating motion of 4 types of boat under 4 types of background(e.g. river across a city or river across a forest).
User can control the frequency of floating motion of the boat (i.e. larger wave at the same time) by pressing a button. Is there existing library can implement this?
I want to know how you guys model the movement of the object that you want to “draw”? As now I am going to draw diffierent kinds of boat under different backgrounds, I really dont 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 that I have to pay attention to? Can the 3D studio max graphics be imported into java 3D for manipulation?
Pls help, thx!

Sorry, this is not an OpenGL question. If you’re using Java3D you should look for an online resource to help with that, this web site has a section for higher level scene graph type APIs.

I’m moving your question there.