Hey,
I saw this Pixar breakdown: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-tech-of-pixar-part-1-piper-daring-to-be-different/
and I tried you rebuild the sand in blender. After this first test, I decided to make a whole scene. At the moment, I´m working on a crab.
The sand is created with 10.000.000 sand grains
Hope you like it so far.