Hello,
Hey am I totally nuts to think there may be a good way to use PFlow and reactor to simulate the sand in an hourglass as it is tipped over (Max8)? Or should I just figure out a fake approach with geometry and some “hero” particles.
Thanks,
-David
Hi Brandon,
Thanks for the quick but short reply. I did do a search of this thread and found two hits on ‘hourglass’. Neither answered my question, and none of then addresses the issue of FLIPPING the hourglass, which is more like a fluid type of thing. I figured that I already knew the answer to my question and was going to fake it all, but I thought some of the really clever folks here might have a few pointers on the subject.
I find the searching on CGSociety a bit of a pain (likely do to volume) as I constantly get timeouts on searches. I find I have to really limit the area of search for any luck at all.
That being said I did find another post on the subject just now:
How amny times do we have to revisit this subject? I suggest you do a search and you’ll find this effect covered ad nauseum.
-Brando
Seems like this is a hot button for you. Thanks anyway. I have seen your work, its very good. Your standard response is, however, a bit blunt. Not everyone is at your level, that’s why we chat in these forums.
Thanks,
-David
Nah, it’s just been covered pretty frequently, that’s all. I try and cover it simply here:
Particles are points in space with no volume like sand grains, so you can’t just fill the hourglass with particles and flip it over. They will never collect and pile up on each other. A fluid approach could theoretically handle this because particles are able to interact with each other, but to get a realistic number of particles for such an effect would be problematic at the least. So the method that seems to work best is to use animated geometry to form the majority of the volume and sprinkle particles onto the surface as the obvious grains in motion.
Unless you’ve got physics (Thinking Particles or PF tools Box#2) and a bada$$ machine, you’ve gotta think Brando’s style old school approach:)
I believe there is actually a tut that ships with max that explains the above mentioned technique. You would definitely need to take a quite a few steps further to get a decent result but anyway…
Thank you guys for confirming my gut instinct that faking it is the right way to approach this problem 
The other mantra that goes along with that one is: “technically correct isn’t always aesthetically correct.”
Hell, when does IKEA open? need more frames 
GF is OK with it as long as she can be on top :bounce::buttrock:
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