A pattern brush with variations in the distance between the tiles?

[Tami25723363cgss]

Anyone know if it's possible to make a pattern brush with tunable variations between the tiles? Imagine a pattern brush that's a string of lights. Is it possible to vary the distance between bulbs, but most importantly, without gaps, so the wire remains continuous.

[Kurt Gold]

If by tunable variations you mean some kind of randomness, a custom scatter brush may be suitable.

If it means something else, you may want to clarify a bit and show a sketch.

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

As has already been pointed out, scatter brush is suitable for that. You can use a pattern brush or art brush for the wire and then have the light bulbs on a second brush that is created in the Appearance panel.

[Tami25723363cgss]

Thanks for your ideas. Here's my draft pattern brush. I can't seem to make a scatter brush work due to the fact that the objects (the red cylinders) must alwasy sit on the bottom on the "wire" not in the center, as is what happens when I try a scatter brush. 

In addition, I'm noticing distortion of the objects on some angles. I've made several pattern brushes over the years and this type of distortion seems to be inherent to pattern brushes when there's an acute angle to a curve. Is that true? Is there always some distortion in pattern brushes?

Finally, I know it is possible to make custom corners. however that seems to be hard with this pattern. Would that take care of the distortion? It seems like it might not necessarily take care of this problem. Thank you!

[Tami25723363cgss]

Maybe there's a way to offset the objects in the scatter brush so that they end up positioned at the bottom of the other stroke, using the appearance panel? I couldn't come up with a way myself.

[Monika Gause]

Just use an invisible rectangle as the backmost object in the brush artwork. It must be twice as tall as the artwork.

[Tami25723363cgss]

Thank you Monika. I will try that.

Can you answer my question about distortion and pattern brushes? Is some distortion in the tiles unavoidable?

[Monika Gause]

Pattern brushes will always bend with the path. Only for the start and end tiles it can be avoided.

[Tami25723363cgss]

Thank you!