How to simulate SAND in Blender 3.1?

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Here's how to simulate grains in Blender 3.1. It has its limitations but it works pretty well in some cases.
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00:00 Intro
02:34 Making the Hourglass
03:52 Creating the Simulation
13:41 Creating the Cone
15:40 Outflow
17:53 Setting up Sand
23:11 Materials
29:11 Polishing the Hourglass

[@KaizenTutorials]

Awesome! I've been wanting to do actual fluid particle stuff for so long, so it's super awesome we can do this now in Blender 3.1. Thanks for another great tutorial.

[@BadNormals]

I'm happy you liked it!

[@BensonFilms]

Dude. YES. I'm new to Blender and I've found it to be an incredibly powerful yet painfully unintuitive tool. Your tutorial helped me so much and provided a good foundation for subsequent projects. THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DO THIS

[@martorth]

Duuuude... Massive props to your teaching skills! Really easy to follow your tutorials. I also love that you explain primitive functions and keyboard shortcuts, even though this is mostly no so important for more experienced users, but for beginners they can be crucial! Thanks for your work!

[@vondonks]

thanks again for a superb tutorial higlighting some of the new stuff in 3.1! always stoked for your tuts mate.

[@rileyb3d]

Stunning introduction! Really loving your content.

[@OfficialTheOne]

Congrats On 50K Subscribers! Your Works are Hollywood Level!

[@BadNormals]

Thanks!

[@user-zs4iv3vf5m]

what a great animation with detail tutorial!!, thanks for sharing!

[@unboring7057]

Great tut, thank you! I'd also recommend looking into the awesome molecular+ addon, it's free and creates particle sims where the particles interact with each other, and can pile up like sand. Thanks as always for the great content!

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Nice tip!

[@Ayden3D]

The only issue I could see is that you'd need A LOT of particles in order to get a super sand-like effect. My PC can handle up to 1million particles so the sand would have to be in small amounts

[@pro_rookie_gamedev]

Thanks for this. I just checked out "what's new" in blender 3.1 and came straight to YT looking for sand tutorial 😆

[@vicsaizo]

wow! this is insane, very clever explanation, thx!

[@kretoskim8555]

I swear to God, this guys tutorials are on a different level!!!!!!

[@DonaldDork]

Thank You 🙏. You saved my project.

[@greenmattt]

So cool! Your videos are always awesome

[@basil3201]

Interesting! I didn’t know that is possible with Blender Thank you for the tut

[@theromyelhafize9882]

Bad Normals you are awesome! .. we are supporting you from Africa. keep the good stuff

[@Salen0243]

Thanks a lot I was looking for this so long.

[@BadNormals]

I'm happy you liked it!

[@4KProductionsFilms]

That bowl shot is fantastic! So glad you kept it. It really sells the whole video to me. Great job.

[@essentialelephant8850]

That intro was sick!!

[@NiceGuyShaders]

Did I really forget to thank you yesterday? Sorry. I'll say it now then. Thank you ❤

[@RobbieTilton]

fantastic video. thanks for sharing!

[@GaryParris]

Great tutorial as always, well done :O)

[@bertboerland]

Really, great work!

[@bertboerland]

however, adding screenrecording keys might be a big time saver :)

[@RomboutVersluijs]

You can actually use the old instance method by parent a mesh to it and use the instance feature. That still works in blender

[@basspig]

Looks like the cone is a cheat to make the liquid pile up like sand. Clever. As always, I am in awe of minds that can figure out how to put the infinite number of possible combinations together in meaningful ways.

[@mika.a.haikonen]

Great tutorial!

[@CGObaid]

Awesome man 🤩You can make anything cinematic!

[@yevheniihrushetskyi1525]

Crazy useful stuff!!!

[@kimteam5344]

lovely tuto

[@blendcreator]

i´ve been working for this tutorial for months

[@zulkifantastic]

Awesome! By the way, you can take two separate cylinders and then use loop cuts and increase number of cuts and smoothness (preferably set to smooth). It looks much better and is automatic, rather than manually scaling. (3:10)

[@angrians2762]

Vour videos are very amazing sir very informative . You explained so well that I'am in love with your content ,especially the video I saw of dot product I was shocked that I was using blender and didn't even know this, I really hate maths but when you were explaining I was loving and hope others loved that too .In my country they make us to by heart the formula or remember it by tricks and as result we forget it in just 2 years but what you explained I guarantee I'll never forget . Please sir make more videos on math topics covered in blender . Thank you . Also please suggest me material were I can learn these math used in blender for geo nodes

[@SHIVAM.M.S]

Epic intro 🔥 💯

[@espacemaxim]

One of the few tutorials I kept watching after the default cube was deleted

[@sourdonkeyjuice]

Great tutorial! Only thing is that sand is actually more sharp and less spherical than you did here.

[@BadNormals]

Soon you can change the shape of the primitive, it's a sphere just currently

[@KrunoslavStifter]

True, I work with actual sand and usually there is also variation in shape, size of the grains and translucency of grains and they in real life tend to have different magnetic properties so some repel and some attract more. None of it really is that important if you can hide it with good lighting and show from further away, maybe add some motion blur etc. But yes, if one wanted to make sand more like in real life they are not like 3D perfectly printed spheres they are far more random than that. But to be fair even in real life, small grains look similar enough unless you shoot with macro lens or look at it under microscope or magnifying glass, so its quite forgiving for well though out animators.

[@citrusblox9635]

you can do that now making multiple particle emission and vary them in and colour and use a rounded cube

[@narancia1538]

great tutorial

[@covid-20_pro_max88]

Thanks

[@videocreatorzz]

More than epic♥️

[@zycietosztuka8754]

excellent content

[@naasofficial]

i was able to use the process you did for the cone to make random street lights for a scifi city. thanks

[@jvburnes]

Hey Bad! I've been trying to simulate good sand storms in Blender eevee for the last 2 years and it's very difficult getting both the macro dynamics of wind blowing it with the micro dynamics of it hitting objects. You can do it with smoke, but it looks like smoke. You can composite larger voronoi fractured particles, but the simulation quickly runs out of steam. It looks like they've solved this in 3.1. Finally. Thanks for the simulation. I love how the geometry nodes can have a glassy look. BTW: The colors of sand particles depends on the sand. An hour glass usually has very fine, pure, white sand. In sand storms you use desert sand which is usually a combination of various brown, pink, red and black in various distributions. It depends on the desert and where the particles come from, what they've made of etc. Can you attach geometry nodes to components of a voronai fracture? One last thing, and this is probably the hardest to simulate. What would be required to make the particles actually pile up in a cone rather than forcing the cone shape? Does that require some kind of "sticky" physics attribute so that they scatter a little and pile up. I realize this would make the simulation complexity extremely high as you couldn't get rid of any of the nodes. They would just sit there static. Maybe that attribute that you changed so that only the outside particles were simulated.

[@unboring7057]

Hey jvburnes - look into the Molecular+ addon. It allows particles to interact with one another and "pile up", and it's free and awesome!

[@BlenderBob]

Very cool! Awesome tutorial!

[@ragibrahman9594]

great I've been wanting to do something similar to this. thank you for making this. i appreciate your help. but can you make more videos with Houdini.

[@timursaglambilek]

So valuable this is! I'm now wondering how you can adjust the amount of grains afterward??? The liquid options in the particle tab no longer seem available once you've executed the geometry node steps.

[@olanrewajuogunniran6101]

That's sick

[@Shadowreaper8435]

Great Tutorial, was trying to do an effect like a paint bomb going off and taking a still photo of it as a desktop background, this brought me more than close enough to achieving that I've noticed one issue while following along however: persistence. the random value node in the geometry nodes seems to generate a random value every frame so all the particles change in size every frame. same goes for the random value generated by the point info node in the shader, so the particles also change in color every frame it's not a big issue for me since I'm doing a still shot, but it's not great for animations. looking at your intro it seems that you weren't having these issues so I'm wondering if this is a version difference (maybe the way random values are handled changed at some point between blender 3.1 to 4.1) or if this is something you fixed in the process of making the animation but left out of the video

[@muscle__rr]

Man these intros are getting damn hollywood grade

[@S9universe]

Thank you, so mush

[@thebulletkin8393]

Your lighting in that demo vid is just so good looking! It genuinely looks interesting, rather than my flat 3 point lights :|

[@BadNormals]

Thanks! It's very easy as I told, just squeeze the maximum out of one light and you're good to go.

[@issac7787]

This is what i need

[@Sixstring65adgmail]

Great stuff! Does the same concept/principal apply to the sugar (pouring out of the bowl)? Because that's the idea I'm looking for. So if I first "pour" the sugar in a bowl and than tilt the bowl, the sugar will "flow"out?

[@gart2922]

Hello there, I really appriciate all your video and explenation of geometry node and new way to use it. May I ask if you know a way to get the weight map attr without inputing it manually in the modifier input bar? Currently I only found I have to put it on by one.

[@1982Jonte]

I have been watching your videos for quite some time now, and I must ask...Do you work with CGI or anything besides making these videos? Because you are god damn awesome at making these things!

[@BadNormals]

Thank you! I do some occasional freelance work sometimes. But I got those freelance projects because of KZbin, I'd say my skills have gotten better mainly because I make videos, as there is a certain pressure to deliver something good every time.

[@1982Jonte]

@@BadNormals It is really great! Keep up the good work, and stay safe from Russia. You are a lot closer than I am, I am in Sweden but I am still worried...

[@BadNormals]

@@1982Jonte Don't worry, I will stay safe! And our eastern border is currently really empty of troops too.

[@astralyd]

Thank you for the tutorial, I have two problems, my cone only displays inside the glass bottom of the hourglass and the sand floats quite far from the edges of the cone ?

as anytime i try to do something according to tutorial - from certain moment things stop working as they should to and i never find out why

[@uxedmedia]

Great tutorial! thanks alot for sharing. :)

[@arronslade]

Fantastic tutorial. I need to do something similar but need the sand to start at the bottom and then flow when the timer is rotated. Would this method work in that instance ?

[@Khamurai]

That opening animation though

[@stefanguiton]

Excellent!

[@BadNormals]

Love to hear that!

[@scottlee38]

Never seen sand that real in Blender!!

[@leopixelstudios]

Great tut! thx.. and how do we make the top sand empty.. right now, it flows for ever!

[@ManningMoore]

How did you add motion blur to the particles?

[@piercethelight7166]

it was working right until the end, right as I used the particle instances, i can no longer see any of the simulation in render preview. Im using Cycles as well. does this have to do with me using blender 3.0 instead of 3.1? cant figure it out for the life of me

[@Diandredofus]

Can you show the full scene setup with lighting/background/HDRI/Camera animation? Did you use any volume lighting in that shot? Trying to replicate the same.

[@pablobourdiel]

Amazing! Can I ask how you enable the motion blur in the points? I tried enable the motion blur in the render settings, and also tried de vector blur in the composition. Neither one worked =(

[@Nonaxnj]

would be cool making a sand man with this

[@jamesgodspower7734]

Love it

[@_vipgraphics]

This is amazing! I can't seem to find the download link at the end? Would love to get the source files :)

[@basejumperdx4573]

Can we render something else than round particles? Like can we render some flat and some other shape particles?

[@Metal92990]

Please explain the rest of the functions of the Math Node and Vector Math Node.

[@alperg1142]

NICE very thank you. 1 Question other a one event 》 How to change , custom area texture on scanned pointcloud object. Maybe only logo change. Project texture problem how to use on deform object ??? Thanks

[@CodeZakk]

Awesome!!!loved it thanks!!

[@mohammadazharalam692]

For some reason, particles on the bottom cone are floating in the air. particles are not touching the cone surface for me. is there something I am doing wrong? I checked the whole video but did found any step that I missed.

[@JOlivier2011]

inspiring

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Why was the liquid off set so far from the edge. I didn't hear anything related to that in the video. Is that a collision setting perhaps?

[@gabrielomane-yeboah]

Any compositing tutorials, please? One about compositing the various render passes in maybe After Effects or Fusion

[@TamerBayouq]

Blender Bob has a detailed composition tutorial. That might be what you want?

[@Visuwyg]

I am looking for a particle simulation that actually piles up in a cone. Right now with fluids most I can do is something akin to mud.

[@TomWDW1]

Do fluid sims have any sort of 'stickiness' sliders? If you could make the particles more sticky, they'd pile up in more of a cone, right? Not sure if this is a thing yet

[@jonahtieman4454]

Could I make it to where the sand is just stationary and a cube runs through it?

[@vodoleyy]

Stupid question maybe but I dont get how change rotate point in edit mode. Period key just input period above (when we write degrees of rotating).

[@sergiomarchelli]

I use c4d and redshift bit starting to look at blender how much time you render it?

[@montblancsuh]

I have put a sphere and cube but, somehow not seeing any blue particles (animation) when aded physics(fluid) to each shape @5:35. not sure what I am doing wrong..

[@Aristocle]

I have a question: how to simulate a magnetic dipole with its magnetic field animation?

[@basspig]

I just have one question though... initially, my particles were larger than I wanted, but after instancing the particles to a single vert, I found that changing the simulation size for the particles didn't change the size of the instanced particles. Is it necessary to delete the instance and redo when changing particle size?

[@Kerranor]

You can control the size of your particles by setting the point radius in the geometry nodes. So no you don't have to redo the bake.

[@erochicken]

what do I do if my particles don't show up I followed the steps up to about 5:25 but the particles don't show up for me

[@samuelstockhammer6411]

set type to replay

[@repositorytutorial3d50]

Hello, thanks for the tutorial it's so good!!!! How do you capture the screen and yourself so smoothly when the calculation is running? if try doing it the audio and the screen glitch and lag so much! I have a rtx 2060 and a i7 10th gen 32 gb ram

[@BadNormals]

I'm using a remote PC through Parsec and recording the screen of my Mac.

[@mylifeastylerwhite]

Can you use sand in an animation like quick effect liquid with text?

[@magopoligonal7349]

broh what do you recommend to start studying those mathematics concepts that you use?

[@willowjoubert7685]

Why are my water particles so huge? How do I fix it

[@chanahasnomana]

the procedure is extremely intuitive. How did you figure it out?

[@totochandelier]

nice !

[@mizo2452]

hi lets say I have a bumpy ground with a desert shader as a collision object, and I want to have the visual effect of flying sand particles by the wind using mantaflow, is a bit tricky since the sand has a specific connected particles pattern which I find very hard to achieve with the mantaflow smoke basic parameters, i used 2X wind forces to achieve the effect and i played with the domain parameters ut still didn't have the desired flying sand pattern

[@depthsofabjection]

lol, actually trynna do the same thing here. not sure how to go about it either

[@guilhermepctm2244]

Does anyone know if it's possible to use point clouds to make foam particles from fluid simulations?

[@MohamedCGDZ]

Good , this is best way to make #couscous commercial in blender 😀👍 thenks

[@drumboarder1]

Does anyone not have the liquid start to simulate at 5:25, my sphere is just an empty sphere and I've been having this problem for a month. Thought I was following an outdated tutorial or something but nope steps for 3.1 are identical

[@RajeshJustaguy]

at 19:33, why not just make the Domain object, "domain" under viewport settings?

[@TallyHD]

You're the BennyProductions for Blender

[@BadNormals]

Now I only need to move to the Netherlands.

[@thekolerotholi1783]

hey great tutorials...you mind trying the same intro movie with an addon called ''molecular'' and see how it compares to your workaround?

[@slyasassin]

My 2022 m1max Macbook pro 64gb ram and 1tb storage keeps crashing everytime i play or run bake after I add a second effector

[@soupborsh8707]

Maybe decrease density to 0, and surface tension

[@z-beeblebrox]

2:00 to add on to this, if you do need a camera to begin in a still position and start moving, make the bezier LOOOOOOOOOONG. No! Longer! Our eyes are EXTREMELY sensitive to camera movement, so even the tiniest changes will register, and that means the default curves will look way way too abrupt and robotic to our eyes. They might *seem* smooth but they're not smooth enough for cameras! Stretch em out and give your timeline enough room to perform that kind of move. If it feels like it's taking too long to get up to speed, chances are that you should be starting the scene in motion. Only begin a camera move from zero in very rare circumstances

[@antonios5572]

it's possible the make the sand accumulate with physics sim instead of faking it with a cone?