Looking to Make Hoofprints, Cart Tracks and Horse Apples

[egdcltd]

I want to make horse hoofprints and cart tracks, in mud or dirt, as well as horse apples. I have a feeling a Photoshop brush and using layer styles may get the desired results, but I'm not really sure how to go about this (I suppose horse apples could be constructed from scratch, but that might be a bit complicated). Are there any brushes like this? Or how would I go about making the images to use? And what sort of layer styles - bevel and emboss comes to mind.

Thanks.

[Meshon]

So, awhile ago I got obsessed with streets. I didn't like how my maps looked when I just laid in a cobblestone texture; streets have a direction, flow, and use, and I wanted my maps to show that. And they're messy! When people use streets, or even when they don't (because ruins) the streets collect all kinds of debris along the edges. I guess I also got obsessed with dirt and mess on maps…

One of the main things I started doing was applying brushes to paths. There's an explanation of the technique for photoshop in the tutorial in my signature. I have a sample here of an old project where I was going to make ruined city tiles, so I included the map and then some images of the settings I used, both layer styles and brush settings. If you have more questions I will try to answer, though I'm working on a commission and then I have to get back to my languishing section in the Guild City!

Example Map:
blockTiles1.jpg

Layer styles:
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.29.29 AM.png
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.29.36 AM.png
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.29.43 AM.png

Brush settings:
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.31.12 AM.png
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.31.39 AM.png
Screen Shot 2017-01-20 at 9.31.49 AM.png

Hopefully this helps and isn't too bewildering. I've never thought of horse apples despite my love of making maps dirty, and I think an appropriately coloured scatter brush would work really well! Great idea

Cheers
Meshon

[egdcltd]

Thanks! I haven't tried the hoofprints or tracks yet, but your suggestion about the horse apples has, I think, got me on the right track (I hadn't heard of scatter brushes before). I combined it with the pebble method from the battlemap tutorial and got a decent start to them I think.
horseapples.jpg