Smoke-like material without simulation? I'm trying to find a less techy alternative to render water splashes in a river than the smoke simulation.

All what i've found is tutorials to make waterfalls that have been done with the smoke simulation, where the results are awesome.

But i can't go that way, basically because i'm not Pixar and i need to have the final render (wich will be a 1 min. long animation) whitin a reasonable amount of time.

I'm trying to figure out the way it was done before simulations...I don't need it to look realistic at all.

Thanks in advance!

PD: this is totally related to this question
To elaborate on Joel's recommendation of using smoke sprites: I believe he is suggesting an instanced set of small face primitives positioned in a scattering at the surface of the water object. Vary the transparency, size, and the magnitude of a small animated shimmer movement so that each small face (sprite) has an additive motion overlaid onto the base water object(s) in the waterfall. Also assign material and texture from a collection of smoke pngs.

A key consideration is that these sprite elements should remain roughly normal to the camera view plane...not parallel to the water or its not really acting as a sprite just another texture-mapped animated object.

The cumulative effect of the instancing is to allow variability of the image, shimmer motion, size, position, and transparency while reducing discrete object definitions. The art is in making the sum of sprite variations appear like hydraulic effects such as turbulence!

(Note :if my 'comment all' creds came thru I would have simply commented on Joel's comment instead of adding a new 'answer' with these details.)