Well, this turned out to be quite unfortunate. Upon seeing the amazing highpoly work, I had amazing expectations for this piece.
The model looks flawless, but the textures are incredibly sub-par. But what else would one expect when automated tools are so common, people have lost sense what is a good texture anymore. But that's another story.
It all looks very rough and like you haven't had much time to finish the texture. I see no gloss variation whatsoever, only random scratches on flat surfaces and edge scratches that don't look too good either. What you obviously want is some gloss variation - the gun isn't exactly new anymore, and the scratches imply that the gun has been used for quite some time, but there isn't anything representative of that wear - no dirt, no other types of wear aside from scratches. You should take a look at other talented texture artists (plenty of good work on Artstation, you just have to find it) - take a look at their wear, the shapes, and try to recreate it on your gun.
Wood is of course the same material that Quixel supplies by default... most of the time it doesn't match the purpose, as I believe it was taken from a floor photo or something like that. You don't want a floor texture on your stock, do you? I would recommend making your own wood texture out of several wood photos - it would fit much better.
Now I'm not exactly sure if this is done or anything - I would add wear to the wood as it looks completely clean right now.
@artizan - I think the stock needs to be more saturated and darker; a richer color. There's also some nice dented detail in the wood following the grains that's non existent in your texture. It should also be quite a bit more shiny based on references I found.
Also here's a reference of an MG 42 that was made for Far Cry 4. See how there's a nice amount of roughness variation between the metal and dirt accumulation and there's a few materials going on at the same time that results in a very interesting image to look at?
Another thing to consider is generally there isn't really much of any scratches in references I found either. There's wear but not really scratches.
@ComradeDispenser - Discounting automated tools because they're a shortcut is not very smart. Ultimately good texturing is good texturing no matter the tool you use. Automated tools present issues for people when they don't know what makes good textures and then they apply things without restraint or knowledge of when or how to apply things. When you have a good understanding of what makes good textures you should be able to achieve good results in photoshop, quixel suite, substance painter, or any other common software. Look no further than Uncharted 4 to see the results automated texturing can achieve (they used substance painter and substance designer thoroughly throughout production).
Oh no, I didn't mean that he should stop using automated tools altogether - I'm saying he should handpaint stuff until he knows what's actually a good texture and what's not, then using automated tools is a good idea.
COMRADEDISPENSER, JACK M. ,thank you both, I take your criticism seriously and I will rework on the textures based on what you say. Jack M., I look at Farcry's mg42 while doing mine, but their approach is like to make very obsolete gun, left from ww2 many years ago with no metal paint remaining, and heavily modified. of course you are right about the wood and scratches.
Maybe someone else could pitch in here, but having gone that route myself I don't think there's much benefit to learning texturing first through hand painted means vs. automated tools. In either case it'll look bad to start with. In either case you'll need consistent criticism from your peers to get better. In either case you'll need tons of practice to make good artwork.
The speed, flexibility, and ease of use that stuff like quixel and substance offer allow you to make things quickly and make changes quickly. This allows you to get more feedback faster and make more changes on a given asset in the same time frame if you were working out of photoshop. For this reason I personally think it would be even better to learn texturing on one of those tools than something like photoshop. Then as someone becomes really good at texturing they could try their hand at photoshop (I know "Amsterdam Hilton Hotel" uses photoshop as his primary texturing tool and is one of the fastest hard surface artists I've seen around here).
But then again, maybe that's just me. I know others will definitely disagree with that sentiment.
The problem with automated tools is that they're restrictive. When you use only Photoshop, you have no boundaries - the biggest boundary I see with automated tools is that you can't simply take a really nice photo, then use it as a mask/clone stamp it to other locations (I'm talking about Quixel SUITE here, dunno about Substance). The given freedom allows you to explore all possibilities, and making sure that you find what you like the most. Only then I would personally use automated tools - try to get the exact result that I want, only faster.
Quixel suite is not restrictive at all, you can actually take a really nice photo and use it as a mask, or load it as a texture and mask it, or any other you can do in "just photoshop", that's the thing.
I think you could use more saturation on the stock and grip. It's still not quite feeling rich to me where the references I found feel quite rich. It's also a little more red where your's is a little more orange.
Replies
The model looks flawless, but the textures are incredibly sub-par. But what else would one expect when automated tools are so common, people have lost sense what is a good texture anymore. But that's another story.
It all looks very rough and like you haven't had much time to finish the texture. I see no gloss variation whatsoever, only random scratches on flat surfaces and edge scratches that don't look too good either. What you obviously want is some gloss variation - the gun isn't exactly new anymore, and the scratches imply that the gun has been used for quite some time, but there isn't anything representative of that wear - no dirt, no other types of wear aside from scratches. You should take a look at other talented texture artists (plenty of good work on Artstation, you just have to find it) - take a look at their wear, the shapes, and try to recreate it on your gun.
Wood is of course the same material that Quixel supplies by default... most of the time it doesn't match the purpose, as I believe it was taken from a floor photo or something like that. You don't want a floor texture on your stock, do you? I would recommend making your own wood texture out of several wood photos - it would fit much better.
Now I'm not exactly sure if this is done or anything - I would add wear to the wood as it looks completely clean right now.
Also here's a reference of an MG 42 that was made for Far Cry 4. See how there's a nice amount of roughness variation between the metal and dirt accumulation and there's a few materials going on at the same time that results in a very interesting image to look at?
Another thing to consider is generally there isn't really much of any scratches in references I found either. There's wear but not really scratches.
@ComradeDispenser - Discounting automated tools because they're a shortcut is not very smart. Ultimately good texturing is good texturing no matter the tool you use. Automated tools present issues for people when they don't know what makes good textures and then they apply things without restraint or knowledge of when or how to apply things. When you have a good understanding of what makes good textures you should be able to achieve good results in photoshop, quixel suite, substance painter, or any other common software. Look no further than Uncharted 4 to see the results automated texturing can achieve (they used substance painter and substance designer thoroughly throughout production).
The speed, flexibility, and ease of use that stuff like quixel and substance offer allow you to make things quickly and make changes quickly. This allows you to get more feedback faster and make more changes on a given asset in the same time frame if you were working out of photoshop. For this reason I personally think it would be even better to learn texturing on one of those tools than something like photoshop. Then as someone becomes really good at texturing they could try their hand at photoshop (I know "Amsterdam Hilton Hotel" uses photoshop as his primary texturing tool and is one of the fastest hard surface artists I've seen around here).
But then again, maybe that's just me. I know others will definitely disagree with that sentiment.
I think you could use more saturation on the stock and grip. It's still not quite feeling rich to me where the references I found feel quite rich. It's also a little more red where your's is a little more orange.