There are a few strange aspects of motorcycle tires (sport bike tires specifically). First off, they curve on two different axes simultaneously. Secondly, they usually have intricate tread patterns that seem to have been carved by a tattoo artist; modeling the treads on them is tricky to say the least.
The best approach I’ve found is to not model the treads. Traditionally I’ve used normal mapping or simply bump mapping along with a slight variance in the color map. This weekend I decided to give it another shot: I created an intricate tread pattern (more…)
