[jfrancis]

Some random thoughts on Maxwell Grass. I may expand on some these questions later. If you beat me to it, please feel free to post.

My immediate goal is to create some interesting 'Japanese paper fiber art,' possibly along these lines:
http://jfrancis.smugmug.com/photos/i-jm ... mFmdgF.jpg
(especially the 'holes' paper)

Inspired by Jason Maranto's video
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 49&t=38823
I was thinking of putting together a Filter Forge version.

To make the Japanese paper full of interlocking fiber whirlpools, I'm interested in processing grayscale gradients into normal maps, [possibly using Filter Forge. Possibly using CrazyBump]

I'm interested in exploring the relationship between normal maps and Maxwell Grass angle maps (off the top of my head you'd swap blue and green channels. Maybe invert one of them. Haven't thought it through]

The topic of 3D gradients and partial derivatives is interesting to me. The Alien Skin Eye Candy http://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/examp ... spx#]Swirl filter somewhat illustrates the ideo of iso-lines and lines of maximum change, but not in a way that passes along the vector information in a useable way.

I'm also interested in highly choreographed, placed curves that guide or become hairs. I work from within Maya usually, and I've been playing aound with Paint Effects as it translates into Maxwell Hair.

[jfrancis]

Japanese_Paper_repeat by jfrancis, on Flickr

Here's a (substance - bitmap) tiled scan of the paper I'm trying to emulate.

For expediency I may just use this for my immediate needs, rather than simulate it. We'll see.

[jfrancis]

Playing around with a synthetic loopy heightfield that gets processed into a normal map and further processed (a minor adjustment) into a grass angle map.

Now I want the fibers to grow in the direction of iso-lines, not in the direction of maximum gradient.