I got to the point where I needed to create grains and kinda sprinkle them in the ladles creating the kinda heap as found in the original shot.
I’ve tried several approaches, but they don’t yield realistic results (or perhaps I’m not doing it right). What I’ve tried?
Rain grain particles with the ladles being collision enabled. However, the particles don’t interact realistically, either having lots of inter-grain spaces or their overlapping-ness isn’t realistic and doesn’t heap as well.
Molecular addon. The problem I had with this addon is that it doesn’t support rotation enough, because when the grains settle down on each other, they need to rotate slightly in order to fill in the gaps available around them.
I wish to be enlightened, the best, most efficient, yet realistic way to create a heap of grains on a surface, either via an addon or using built-in blender particle systems. Or Particle systems shouldn’t be used entirely?
Your ideas are welcome, as I’ve run out of ideas myself. Thanks :eyebrowlift:
Well, if you want to get the best result, manual stacking is gonna be your best result, at least for the top layer.
If you want the most natural result, make the objects and add physics to them and literally scoop them up with the ladles. That will involve a little animation, but it is an option if particle systems don’t do the job.
If you want to try something with particle systems, try setting the particles to fluid. They usually don’t intersect as easily on that, as they do on the rest, where they just pass through each other.
Another thing you can do is to form the heaps as a mesh, and then add two particle systems to that, one on volume and one on faces. That may also give you the result you want.
Just a few suggestions, but I’m sure there may be a lot more than just these. Blender is very varied, haha.
Keep us updated!
I think the heaping is a nice idea too. Will give that a try. I think I would have to combine the different ways to get the best result. Perhaps after the heaps, I could sprinkle some particles via rain-like way, then hand-add some particles to fill in one or two areas just to make appealing to eye.
Maybe scale it all a bit (and aply scale) and give it another go with rigid bodies.
Use actual mesh shape as bounderies.
I once had unrealistic looks with that too, till i scalled it all up, on larger scales it seams to work better.
I geuss some kind of butterfly effect (a math thing)
