Creating Geometric Texture on Existing Surfaces

[Neuffexx]

Simply said, I have these objects here and I was hoping to find a way to use textures to apply geometric changes to the walls of this object that are facing outwards. Limited strictly to these surfaces/walls.

Examples would be a simple brick wall texture, to engrave the lines or define the bricks.

Though I dont want to necessarily alter the base mesh too much as I want to keep it editable, i.e. a non-destructive workflow approach would be good as I am doing this change retroactively, and might want to change what texture to use as a basis for the patern.
(to be clear I dont want to simply slap a texture with a normal map on it, I want to deform geometry)

What would be some good approaches for this?
Simply adding sub-div (simple) + displacement?
Or maybe using mesh deform to target a face that already has a displacement texture?

Any suggestions are welcome!

[Neuffexx]

The way I have done it for now is by creating a vertex group of the exterior surface, UV unwrapping it- and using that as a coordinates method for the Displace modifier.

Though im still curious about any ways to create it if anyone knows any:

[etn249]

This is a pretty good way of doing displacement on a wall, though on the expensive side. I wouldn’t use this kind of detail unless you are doing 3D printing. If it’s for using in a Blender scene though, I would apply and decimate the result to bring it back to a usable polygon count.

An other way I could see would be building the wall out of actual bricks, then voxel remeshing them together (if you need a single mass).