I want to simulate one single cardboard box falling on a plane in Blender. The cardboard box is a very simple model, a cube with its top opened in half/quarters
Does one need to rig the model? Or can this be achieved with constraints? I don’t know either one of them. Does anybody have an idea to better kick start me towards a feasible option?
See the image below for better understanding the object I want to simulate:
If all you want to do is close/open it’s flaps, shape keys might be the easiest way go.
I agree. But I really want to see many cardboards falling on a ground and creating a natural looking pile of cardboards.
Sure, one can model a few slightly different looking cardboards and start putting them on top of each other by hand. But simulating it would be so cool, would not it?
If you were to drop the box in the photo it would stay basically the same.
Thanks for the comments guys, let me share my initial experiments!
After experimenting with soft body physics and rigid body constraints, I created two simulations. Each give half of what I want 
… But to my discovery, Blender cannot calculate soft body cloth simulations together with rigid body simulations.
The things is, either one of these simulations can get “effected” by the other, however the “effector” won’t be influenced by the simulation that is effected. The way to setup such jointed simulations have specific configurations of the objects in their physics tabs.
So after much experiment, I thought I figured out a way to have both simulations act together… A group of rigid body constraints object that also behave like soft body… The ultimate setup… The way was to apply the soft body simulation in the modifier stack as a ‘shape key’, then add this object as a rigid body with properties such as “animated” and “Source: deform, deforming checked” in the physics tabs. However, it did not interact with other rigid bodies correctly. So I gave up on that…
Below you can find .blend file I mentioned above, where I simulated rigid bodies and soft bodies seperately. Eh, it is close enough! Don’t you think?
EDIT: actually, when ‘tension’ and ‘compression’ values are increased, that of the soft bodies, they yields a more ‘natural’ result. Just a new discovery, so the .blend files are not updated. In them, the soft bodies boxes are such squeeshy 
