Cineversity

I like this tutorial but how would I go about instead of a logo make a pile of powder in a mountain like pouring shape like a salt pile mound? and have some dust fly as pouring in wind

I just added a attractor it seems to work a little bit!

Hey Midnightrider,

DUST, lots of them.

The simple way is, to use the Landscape Object and animate the grow the Y-size of it. Use a Particle Emitter to “rain” the dust on it. Perhaps with hair as shader/render option.

The Landscape needs an dusty shader/texture, which could be in its simplest form a Noise shader. As that would look rather static, I would connect the particles with an Proximal Shader as a layer Mask (in a layer Shader) to blend between two noise shaders, to get a little bit life into it. If the particles would slow down after reaching the surface, you might get a nice but simple impression. A animated texture, perhaps a filmed (practical) version of that sand clock effect is preferable.

Besides that, and more advanced version goes easily into the “direction” of fluid simulations, for that use Real-flow, if hi end quality is needed.

All in all, this is not a simple task, as each dust particle causes practically a calculation. So - I would invest some time in R&D if needed.

You might check out other options like displacement etc. Some stuff needs a lot of attention, and is not a ready made. Think about “Spiderman 3” the guy that was created out of sand, that was close to the limits of a complete studio. Perhaps the “Making Of” tells you a little bit about (Cinefex might help as well).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXOa5bWFRKw

Good luck

Sassi

Not Dust, just PILLS

If you like only the few pills to pile up, the the friction must be higher, and the bounce lower. Include a Friction Object with a fall off, so close to the ground the motion is very slow and the energy of the pills is taken away. Perhaps play with the setting, e.g., friction to 100 and the fall off liner Y+ and adjusted with a Spline so it progressively becomes stronger.