[Blender] Any tricks to procedurally topologize negative space between cobblestones?

Zablorg

I've got a pretty solid cobblestone material going right now, but the grout the stones rest in looks very flat, because presently it's baked from a flat plane. I'd like to add some depth to it- grooves that are sunken in deepest the further away from a stone it is.

So, here's what I'd be working with:



That's subtracting the rocks from the flat plane, so no workable topology to speak of. Ideally, I'd be able to generate a topology that features edges running between the stones in a fairly intuitive fashion, so I can pull them down and generate the depth.

Are there any tricks/modifiers that could achieve this? It feels like a long shot, particularly because any given arc of any given stone has a different number of vertices, but it'd be very useful to me.

jakemoyo

I would say a Displace modifier might work. You could use a noise  or even a seamless pebble texture if you wanted to give it some overall  variation. As far as generating topology you'd probably have to triangulate, then tris to quads, and then subdivide once to even it out a bit and then it should be ok.