How to create realistic powder? I want to model powder in a dish like in this picture.



I have tried to create the powder using the particle system by following some suggestions in an earlier answer, but so far I had no success.

I can't control the overall shape of the powder, and the particles seem to pass through the dish even with collisions enabled.


Can someone please tell me how to create powder in Blender?
You have two solutions :

1- Use the game engine to make powder fall and after save the last frame. You can modelise each particule of pownder as a tiny cube for example, but it won't give you a result that is graphically appealling. 

2- If you want to have a result that looks exactly like the image you posted you need to sculpt because of the special pattern that there is on the image.