Help filling large (1m x 1m x 1m) with small cabon pellets

[Luke]

I need to create the geometry for a large box filled with small carbon pellets.
I've tried a few pflow tutorials but it seems that the number of pellets required to fill the box is too large...

does anyone have any other suggestions?

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[aaouviz]

I'd recommend testing out TyFlow

[romullus]

If the box isn't transparent or see through, then you don't have to fill it all with pellets, Add some filler geometry inside the box (a simple plane might do) and pour the pellets on it. You don't even have to cover it completely if you assign matching texture on the filler plane, no one will ever notice that. If you won't render pellets from very close and you don't mind them penetrating each other, then good alternative is to utilise Corona scatter for this - you would get better render times and much lower RAM consumption.

[Luke]

Thansk for the responses... unfortunately the box geometry fades in opacity as smoke rises through the pellets in an animation...

[romullus]

You can still use filler geometry, just not the plane, but smaller box, so the pellets would cover it from all sides.

[Luke]

sorry mate, i'm not following you? can you ellaborate more?

much appreciated. ;)

[romullus]

This.

[Luke]

ah cool - does corona scatter work in 3 dimensions? or just on a plane?

[TomG]

Scatter works on a surface - for things like this, some physical simulation is best as mentioned, like TyFlow, or phy sim in Max, where you let the objects "fall into place with gravity and collisions"

(The filler object helps you avoid having to have quite so many objects to fill up the space, simplifying your physical simulation :) )

[romullus]

Corona scatter has a mode to fill the bounding box volume, so if you don't mind penetration between pellets, it can be viable alternative. It also has "avoid collisions" option, so you can fine tune scattering.

Edit: also have in mind that filler box is needed only if you choose particle driven solution. With Corona scatter there's virtually no limit for number of scattered objects.

[TomG]

Oh that's true - if this is indeed a simple box, then that would work :)