Thanks, it seems your way was different but not necessarily any easier. Here is how my UV mesh was laid out.



And considering it was a large texture at 300 dpi, a large image file to load back into Maya. Here's how the base graphics were laid down.



This is a larger version that might be of use, but none of my final maps actually looked like this, these are just the base elements against grey, I turned this into a weathered diffuse map, a normal map and a reflection map. Still it may help someone test the idea.



Please don't anyone expect this to be an authentic copy of an actual tire, the specs are kind of random.