blender physics hour glass

Using Blender's Physics engine. The inspiration for my hourglass model, done in Blender, is based on a tutorial for a similar hourglass model done at this link: http://www.artofillusion.org/docs/hourglasstut/index by Rick van der Meiden.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• blender
• animation

[Suthek]

is it possible to create really fine sand and make it do movements like floating around?

(as like Gaara from Naruto would control it)

[sittiz]

Suthek, I had a goal of eventually making fine sand-like objects flowing through the hourglass. People who do scripting for Blender probably would have an easier job making the sand float around. You can apply wind and vortex effects to objects, so that might work too.

[agent47crows]

Pretty neat, you know?

But one impressive thing - how did you get actual physics IN the hourglass? Mine, they just bounce randomly and penetrate the mesh!!

[sittiz]

Thanks for the comment angent46crows.

I made my hourglass from a Bezier curve (if I remember correctly) and then applied a 360 degree spin using 36 steps. (Maybe subdivide the mesh more?) Aside from the simple texturing to give it a glassy look, I didn't do too much else to it.

[sittiz]

My spheres also bounce around at first, but this video is rendered beginning with frame 55 when they settle down and begin to behave more like being affected by gravity. That is one trick that I use in doing a video, not necessarily using early frames since they may not demonstrate the behavior that one is attempting to show.

[sittiz]

Speaking of gravity, I also had to set the initial downward force on the sphere's to simulate gravity (I think, it's been a while since I made the hourglass animation).  Also, there is a setting to affect the size of the "field" around the sphere's that needs adjustment as well.

[tiniuclx]

@Suthek

I'm kind of a newb with Blender, but there is an option to make particle effects take the shape of an pre-made mesh. So, if the sand was done with particles, you could get that Gaara effect.

[ffKingcreole]

try fluids with sand texture and bumpmap if you're lucky noone will notice the difference xD

[agent47crows]

Thanks for the help!

[sittiz]

thanks for commenting zakyzeek. I had hoped to make the sphere objects much smaller and get an effect like sand flowing through the hourglass. Haven't gotten around to that yet.