Dynamic Stacking Cubes

[Mistah]

Hi there!

Not sure if this is the right place to request help for these kind of questions. If not sorry in advance.

I'm new to Houdini coming from 3DS Max, did some tutorials and I really like the procedural concept. 
It got me to rethink how I should animate things. Now I have a specific end goal in mind to test and I'll try to explain it with the image below

In the first phase (1): cubes are moving and rotating randomly in space.

In the second phase (2): (some of) the cubes are getting atracted to eachother and start to form a stack. It would be cool if it had a specific rotation in the stack as well.
So now the stacks are moving randomly in space as a whole instead of seperate units

In 3DS Max, for the forming of the stack I would animate in reverse: I'll start with the end result (2) give it a path deform modifier on a spline (the spline control points with noise modifier so the spline floats around in space) and then manually animate the cubes to the beginning position (1). I would give the cubes noise on rotation and position (to make them fly randomly in space) and animate the value to stop when in the stack.
It's probably not the most efficient way but it works.

However it would be really cool to let a program like Houdini calculate the whole process. 
For example when two cubes are getting close to each other they start a stack, and when a stack is forming they attract nearby cubes to follow suit.

Can somebody help me out? Or maybe point me to a relevant tutorial I havent fount yet.

[angelous4x]

I would start reversed, with them stacked up first,  then do your sim. then add a time warp and reverse the frames.

or do a pop attracted to points.

 

 

Edited August 2, 2019 by angelous4x