Porous object, texture or geometry? I'm trying to model something like this (sorry for the small picture)



that is basically a half sphere made of sintered or aggregated smaller spheres, like a thick multilayer.  I was wondering if this could be achieved by simulating gravity with lots of smaller particles and them emptying the core, or with a particle system of any kind, or even with a solidified sphere with a porous texture, any idea?  I'm not that knowledgeable in Blender.
Solved!

I followed this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gM8yEMFMjg, where the author is using a sphere as a volume container, and then sets up a particle system emitting from the volume.  I haven't managed to run the physics simulation to avoid particle overlapping, but in my case should be good enough.