Does anyone have an intuitive way of controlling their warps?
I'm trying to make a curved and fanned-out portion of a striped pattern (call it a seashell if you want).
I'm using a stretched powerfractal (so basically it's stripes in the z-direction).
I'm hand-painting grayscale bitmaps in Photoshop to control where and how much I want the warp to occur, because I need specific warps in specific places. Can't leave it up to random fractal seeds. The grayscale bitmap plugs into a vector displacement with a multiplier in x-direction. That plugs into the warper. Works alright.
The issue that I'm having is that it's utterly difficult to paint precisely the warper bitmap I need.
I've made gradients in nearly every direction, and just can't wrap my head around it. This seems like it'd be naturally more warp, more white. Less warp, less white (or more black). Not quite this easy though.
For making a curved fan shape, it honestly seems like I don't need a grayscale gradient map, but the derivative of the grayscale gradient map (which is even harder to figure out). Just a gradient makes angled lines from the vertical powerfractal.
What would really help is a radial-warper, a radial vector displacement, or a rotational vector displacement node that can handle a bitmap.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
-Matt
