Is there a better way to make complex cloth, than sculpting it?

Question

I want to make this exact white blanket.

How would you go about creating such a fluffy, extremly wrinkled blanket.

I went through some tutorials, but they only deal with very simple blankets.

I would like to get it to like 80% before starting to make the details with sculpting. The smaller blankets on top should fall into place much easier, once the big white one is done and can function as a collision object.

I also want to constrain myself to blender and dont want to do it in marvelous or etc.

Edit:

Rigg Riggs answer works perfectly as startingpoint.

You can rotate the imageplane used for the displacement-texture to control the direction of the patter without messing it up . Thats how i got it to go diagonally. I also used two diffuse shaders (b/w) in a mix, controlled by the noise texture, instead of his node setup. Seems to work better. At least for me. Had to play around with the settings a bit before getting a texture to my liking. I added a decimate modifier set to un-subdivide and a triangulate modifier once i applied the displacement, to reduce the face-count.

If you have a different approach please feel free to share it. Im trying to learn :)

Answer 1

Render out a texture on plane similar to the following & save the image:

Add a plane to the 3D view > subdivide it like crazy (W >> S)

Add a Displacement Modifier

Create a new texture from here.

Go into the textures tab on the properties panel and set the texture to your rendered out image location on disk.

Come back to the modifiers tab and play with your settings, start with mine here and adjust to your liking.

finally add a subsurf modifier

Last apply the subsurf modifier, then the displacement modifier.

Then go into sculpt mode and have your way with it.