Combine tikz curve with random variation

Question

I would like to combine a curve defined with \draw with a random variation along the path.

So far I have found quite some interesting discussions on tex.SE like How to draw Brownian motions in tikz/pgf, How to fix the trajectory of Brownian motions which generated by the "rand" function with tikz in beamer frames, and (thanks to Kpym, I have overseen this) Simulating hand-drawn lines, but they do not work as expected.

Using tikz-decorations looks promising, but only for relatively straight curves.

The following MWE gives this result:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[x=5mm,y=5mm,decoration={random steps,segment length=3mm,amplitude=1mm}]
  \draw[thick,green] (0, 1) -- (14.5, 1);
  \draw[thick,red,decorate,rounded corners]   (0,-0.5) -- (14.5,-0.5);
  \draw[thick,blue,decorate,rounded corners] (0, 0.5) -- (1,0.5) -- (1.5,-4) -- (2,-3.5) -- (3.5,-2) -- (14.5, 0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

The third (blue) \draw command produces not the result that I try to get - even the red line has a "hickup" at about 75% of the way in x direction.

According to the tikz-manual the reason is: The end of each step is perturbed both in x- and in y-direction by two values drawn uniformly from the interval [−d,d], where d is the value of amplitude. This conflicts with the curved option where variing only the y value should give the desired output. Since the plots describe the change of a value in time they may not turn towards the negative x direction.

Is there any way to restrict the random steps decoration to manipulate only the x value but not y? The alternative would be to overlay a curve by a random distortion at descrete intervals like brownian motions...

Hoping the results are somehow stable (which conflicts with the idea of random shifts - lol) there's no real need to control seeds...

Answer 1

This is an answer to the question: can one have random steps in the y direction? The answer is yes, all one needs to do is to copy the definition of random steps and to set the x shift to zero.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}
\pgfdeclaredecoration{random y steps}{start}
{%
  \state{start}[width=+0pt,next state=step,persistent precomputation=\pgfdecoratepathhascornerstrue]{}%
  \state{step}[auto end on length=1.5\pgfdecorationsegmentlength,
               auto corner on length=1.5\pgfdecorationsegmentlength,
               width=+\pgfdecorationsegmentlength]
  {
    \pgfpathlineto{
      \pgfpointadd
      {\pgfpoint{\pgfdecorationsegmentlength}{0pt}}
      {\pgfpoint{0pt}{rand*\pgfdecorationsegmentamplitude}}
    }
  }%
  \state{final}
  {}%
}%

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[x=5mm,y=5mm,decoration={random y steps,segment length=3mm,amplitude=1mm}]
  \draw[thick,green] (0, 1) -- (14.5, 1);
  \draw[thick,red,decorate,rounded corners]   (0,-0.5) -- (14.5,-0.5);
  \draw[thick,blue,decorate,rounded corners] (0, 0.5) -- (1,0.5) -- (1.5,-4) -- (2,-3.5) -- (3.5,-2) -- (14.5, 0);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Of course one can draw a smooth random curve. At this point, this has to go in two steps.

1. \path[decorate] <path>;
2. \draw[<options>] plot[variable=\x,samples at={1,...,\arabic{randymark}},smooth] (randymark\x);

\documentclass[tikz,border=3.14mm]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing}
\newcounter{randymark}
\pgfdeclaredecoration{mark random y steps}{start}
{%
  \state{start}[width=+0pt,next state=step,%
  persistent precomputation={\pgfdecoratepathhascornerstrue%
  \setcounter{randymark}{0}}]{
  \stepcounter{randymark}
  \pgfcoordinate{randymark\arabic{randymark}}{\pgfpoint{0pt}{0pt}}
  }%
  \state{step}[auto end on length=1.5\pgfdecorationsegmentlength,
               auto corner on length=1.5\pgfdecorationsegmentlength,
               width=+\pgfdecorationsegmentlength]
  { \stepcounter{randymark}
    \pgfcoordinate{randymark\arabic{randymark}}{\pgfpoint{\pgfdecorationsegmentlength}{rand*\pgfdecorationsegmentamplitude}}
  }%
  \state{final}
  {
    \stepcounter{randymark}
    \pgfcoordinate{randymark\arabic{randymark}}{\pgfpointdecoratedpathlast}}%
}%

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[x=5mm,y=5mm,decoration={mark random y steps,segment length=3mm,amplitude=1mm}]
  \path[decorate]   (0,-0.5) -- (14.5,-0.5);
  \draw[red,thick] plot[variable=\x,samples at={1,...,\arabic{randymark}},smooth] 
   (randymark\x);
  \path[decorate] (0, 0.5) -- (1,0.5) -- (1.5,-4) -- (2,-3.5) -- (3.5,-2) -- (14.5, 0);
  \draw[blue,thick] plot[variable=\x,samples at={1,...,\arabic{randymark}},smooth] 
   (randymark\x);
  \path[decorate] (4,4) circle(3cm); 
  \draw[orange,thick] plot[variable=\x,samples at={1,...,\arabic{randymark}},smooth] 
   (randymark\x);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Notice that this is certainly not the first post that draws a smooth random curve through a path, there are several earlier posts, including this one, this one, the answers to this question and the answers to this question.