Lots of options for rendering water, including using the SketchUp Ground Plane

Manipulating a surface to render as water is always interesting.  In the following example I started by turning on the ground plane in the SketchUp model.  Next I addressed the Ground Plane options on the Setup Options -> Sky tab.

Click Edit to display the Create Ground Plane Material dialog.

Main Tab - Set Reflection Values and Render Color

Texture Tab - Select one or more Textures, set Bump Scale and Strength

Combining textures can be interesting.  Bump Scale is one of the more important values to set properly for a water surface that matches your expectation.  What you will probably discover as you experiment is that, depending on the scene, the Bump Scale might be set much higher than you expect.  For example, in the following rendering of the same scene I set Bump Scale to 200.  I also increased the Bump Scale for the sand (wrinkled) to 100.  I like this solution for showing this beach scene at low tide.