How to achieve stair-step pattern in one direction, and smooth in the other?

I know about the “blocks” Remesh option, but that produces stair-step pattern in ALL directions.

Does anyone know of any method where I only produce, say, vertical stair-steps and keep the shape of all horizontal lines?

Here’s an exact example of what I want to achieve:

Couldn’t you use a wave texture for this?

You could use 2 curve modifiers and a plane subdivided to meet the task.

2curve1plane.blend (784.8 KB)

My solution was to first render out a height map:

image

And then use displace modifier, which worked ok, but looks a bit “dulled”:

image