Hi there,
I’m working on a little plastic sand clock toy. Excuse the foggy transparent plastic please, it’s a cheap toy that hasn’t been cleaned very well.
These are some test renders (low samples just for preview, done with Luxrender) of the clock made at different stages:
I was considering how to make the sand, from using a complete particles approach (which would enable a realistic animation, for example) to modelling everything by hand, and finally decided to try a hybrid.
The hybrid means that the tough areas where there would be a ton of particles are modeled as a hard surface, but a small portion is done using a particle emitter that casts a box object, which does have more vertices than some alternatives, but might look better.
I’ll continue working on it this way with trying different configurations, but if someone knows a more effective technique, please do let me know.