Tire tracks in Photoshop that turn how to?

malcolm · Mar 2012

Basically I want to tile a tire tracks pattern around a path I created in Photoshop. See image below, anyone know how to create that in Photoshop? I've tried creating a custom brush and stroking the path, but the pivot point of each stamp of the brush is centered so as soon as my path turns a corner it overlaps itself. Any help here would be much appreciated.

rube · Mar 2012

I don't know how to do it it photoshop.. but if you have illustrator you can make an 'artbrush' that does that.

malcolm · Mar 2012

I figured out how to do it in photoshop, you have to create a custom brush that only has one segment of the tire tread in it, then mess around with the spacing, it will still look crap if you try to paint the pattern by hand, it works "okay" with paths, but there is another lame issues.

Is there any way to make a path stroke live so I don't have to keep deleting it and restroking it each time I change the path curvature?

JR · Mar 2012

Go to paths window. Select your path, and click on right upper arrow (panel menu). There's the option "Stroke path". Then, select Brush, and there you go.

EDIT: Oh, it seems you already know this. You want to be able to change the stroke shape and refresh path shape... Hum, this is more complex.

I don't think this is possible in PS. Maybe, one solution is make a straight line stroke, convert it in smart object and then use Warp to modify its shape, when needed. But this not practical too.

AlecMoody · Mar 2012

I do spline based stuff like this in max and then render it. Photoshop has terrible spline tools. Also worth mentioning is that example you posted isn't actually how tire tracks work (there is a space between each segment that shouldn't be there).

malcolm · Mar 2012

This is a ghetto work around, but I made an action that deletes all the rasterized pixels on my current layer and then strokes the path called "working." When ever I'm working on a specific tire tread behind one of the cars I tweak the path and hit F2 to refresh its stroke.

Photoshop really needs to invest in some non destructive/live tweaking tools.

Racer445 · Mar 2012

yeah sadly there's no perfect way to do this, but i've been having good results with a sampled tire track segment and setting "angle jitter" to be controlled by "direction" then edit the brush spacing. it's not great, but in practice it can look alright.

EDIT: this may not work for your specific purpose, but for anyone looking to paint realistic skidmarks and such, this may do the trick.

Tire tracks in Photoshop that turn how to?

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