Hi all,

I’m trying to model an image like the one attached

I try to model this by using PFlow using the sticks as particles but i can’t limit the sticks to interact to each other (collision detection maybe??) and I can’t limit the sticks to be included in the container (a box maybe). Is there a way to do this without using a third party add-on?
I have the Lock On Emitter checked but the particles stick through the container walls…

thanks....

Not sure how to solve the collision detection with Pflow. Particles tend to be ignorant of their assigned geometry, seen only as a single point in space with no volume. Perhapse it could be done with a rigid body dynamics system like Reactor or PhysX. Drop all the sticks into a box and let them settle.
To get the gap inside, with Pflow, use a Mesher to bake into geometry. With RBs, attach into a single mesh. Then Boolean the hole out.

Any tutorials on how to use reactor on the particles that populate the box?
I create the PFlow, and fill a box with the particles and they stick out of the box… I haven’t used reactor before and I looked at some tutorials but I haven’t found a tutorial that uses it with a PFlow…
After that the part of baking the particles to a mesh and using boolean on them I get… :)

Any tutorials on how to use reactor on the particles that populate the box?

With Reactor/PhysX you don’t use particles. Create lots of cyliners for the sticks and make them rigid bodies, then let gravity drop them into place, sort of like this. The difference being you don’t just have the ground plane as a collision object, create 4 boxes for the side walls for them to drop into, you can hide/remove them after.

check out SoftLab’s Red Sea: Click May2008
http://www.softlabnyc.com/work/

They used MEL Scripting to do this.

I think you would definitely need grasshopper, MAX script, or MEL Scripting to do something like this quickly.

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