realistic marching caterpillars?

[vorropohaiah]

hi all, im trying to do hatchures or 'marching caterpillar' mountains in PS though keep on getting stuck in the curves. im using a freeform pen tool to create the contours and stroking them with a tapered brush to create individual strokes (pretty basic stuff) though small jolts in the pen and some of the corners are causing the brush strokes to cross each other (the parts circles in red in the attached image)

Untitled-1.jpg

does anyone know of a better/simpler way of making these types of mountains (other than drawing them individually)?

thanks!

[Carbus]

Im having the same issue. I try to do wider curves, instead of closed ones. And if nothing works, Ill do all the curves/hills/mountains, and then erase the wrong turns and draw them individually.
Edit: Or maybe you could raise the spacing between each line..

[- Max -]

I'm having the same problem here lately :/ So can't help you on this one, sorry...

[Hai-Etlik]

I get good results using Pattern Along Path in Inkscape. I can adjust the base path until the marks placed along it look right. The trick is to use two Pattern Along Path effects together, first the lines perpendicular to the base path, then the shape of the individual mark. You can also toss in a Sketch effect in between to get a bit of randomness.

a.png
b.png
c.png
d.png

I've used it several times:

Picture 1 of 1 from RetroMUD
Picture 3 of 4 from Other
Picture 4 of 4 from Other
Picture 3 of 5 from Contest Entries

[Diamond]

This is exactly the problem I was having in previous maps lately. I don't know of a fix in PS except to do, like Carbus says, erase the lines that look funky and draw those by hand. HE's solution makes me want to get Inkscape more than ever now, but I don't think I can face learning a new program right now...

[vorropohaiah]

thanks Hai Etlik, that seems interesting, though i cant help but agree with Diamond... it was bad enough learning PS, i dread 'wasting' more time learning anything else like illustrator or inkscape...

sigh, guess ill have to fix the broken bits by hand, or perhaps, go for shorter pen-strokes to minimize the damage.

[Hai-Etlik]

thanks Hai Etlik, that seems interesting, though i cant help but agree with Diamond... it was bad enough learning PS, i dread 'wasting' more time learning anything else like illustrator or inkscape...

sigh, guess ill have to fix the broken bits by hand, or perhaps, go for shorter pen-strokes to minimize the damage.

Even if you just learn to use a few capabilities of the software in a supplementary role, using the right tool for the task will ultimately save you untold hours of time. You're really in "hammering in a screw" territory using a raster editor for something like this.

[Midgardsormr]

And Inkscape is actually pretty easy to get started in. If you know Photoshop's Pen tool, you've already learned 80% of any vector graphics application.

[BraveSirKevin]

First up, it's worth making sure your curve is clean before attempting to stroke it. It's a bit of a pain to go through and clean up every single curve, so it might be easier to sketch in a shape with the brush tool and then quickly trace it with the standard pen tool. (I didn't do that here, I just removed any points that caused jolts)

Secondly, you get a much smoother transition if you turn on "simulate pressure" when you stroke the path. The problem with using the simulate pressure option is that it thins the brush stroke to 0 pixels wide at the ends, or at one side of a closed loop, but this can be countered by setting the minimum diameter under Shape Dynamics in the brush control panel. I'd recommend keeping it somewhere around 40-50% as the smoothness diminishes the closer the minimum gets to 100%.

Hope that helps!

[vorropohaiah]

nice! and, yeah i've learnt from experience that even a slight jolt on the line is enough to throw the stroke way off.