Modelling piles and heaps

Support Modeling
1

I want to create static images (not animations) featuring piles of objects.
When there are only 3 or 4 objects it’s fairly easy to arrange them so that their surfaces touch but don’t interpenetrate. As the number of objects increases, this becomes more difficult.

I haven’t done any real animation but I am aware that it is possible to model collisions between objects. Do you think this would be a feasible way of setting up by scene? I guess I might have to raise the objects a little and then allow them to drop into place. Once I had a good configuration I could turn off the collision characteristic (or maybe this wouldn’t be necessary).

Am I barking up the wrong tree ? I be grateful for advice or alternative ways to achieve the same outcome.

2

like a pile of apples? what are we talking?

3

rigid bodies are good for stuff like rice,pasta or lumps of wood
but I’d try a particle system for more powdery stuff

4

you could also use BGE to fill up a volume for instance
or use the new rigid bodies !

happy bl

5

Yes a pile of apples - exactly

6

rigid bodies is what you’ll want for apples, but you might want to make proxy objects if your apples are very high poly. something high poly will make the simulation sluggish. so what you do, is, for every apple, make a low poly cage, then parent the high poly apple to the low poly cage. keep the high poly objects on another layer, and run the simulation on the cage objects.
(edit) http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sergof/GSoC2012/Documentation

7

Thanks Modron … that’s really helpful. I tried dropping my high poly apple meshes into a bowl yesterday. They passed right through. I don’t know whether this is a related problem. (Earlier I had tried UV spheres and they behaved fine).

I’ll try what you suggest.

8

remember to turn physics off for the apples themselves or they will still be calculated into the solution. just the cage meshes.

9

The apples fell through because you need to set the bowl as a rigid body as well. Then under “type” change it to passive.