Run Rodilius, dup, run G'MIC Bilateral filter followed by Wavelet Denoise (2 to 3 times here using ctrl-F) and merge down. The part in red is what I call Illustration Amplication. Set this highpass like result to Grain Merge and dup til happy. I do this quite often and with some additional tricks, you can really get a good Norman Rockwell render with this.

'G'MIC / Local normalization' is one of my favorite filter, particularly when applied on the 'Luminance' channel. Applied on RGB, it tends to boost the colors too much, but on Luminance channel only, that gives a very nice contrast effect. The algorithm behind is quite dumb, but it is enough to make the fibers stand out.

The effect below has been rendered only using Rodilius and Local Normalization filters from G'MIC :

That's a very cool looking effect.

That is awesome David. I actually did play with Value and Luminance and got similar results as with ACE (but again, on this one, I'm more comfortable with using ACE). This all could probably be done in G'MIC but I can't even image the procedure to include all. lol