Give it more variance - glossy/rough noises, one several centimeters wide and one, subtle, much bigger in size (like what you have on the side of your reference sofa).
In the brown leather it's also due to dirt. In the second, I wonder whether it's more roughness variance or height variance. Oh and I noticed one thing - there are smaller cracks and bigger cracks (subtly visible, but still, the real photo doesn't look "tiled" not so uniform).
Still, your sofa looks like it's not so far away. More roughness maybe. But the problem Grimsonfart mentioned really exists.
So... maybe it's about model now? Too artificial, too smooth? Like a balloon, the air pressure smoothening the folds to zero? Maybe you should allow some gravity here, some wobbliness.
You need more low-frequency detail in your textures and in your baked normal map. You aren't going to get the result like in that reference unless you sculpt those wrinkles out.
Before we even talk about giving the leather some wear, you need to first make it feel like leather. The picture Avvi posted is pretty good reference, notice all the cracky vein like structures. Those structures should be represented within your normal, roughness and even a bit within the Albedo.
Check out this tutorial, it talkes a lot about natural noise and variation.
Once you've started getting the feel of leather down you should add some wear to is, make it feel used. Has this couch been sitting in a dark storage container for all time or is it exposed to the sunlight and have parts of it been bleached slightly. Have people spilled coffee on it or have there been other stains.
Check out this tutorial, it talkes a lot about natural noise and variation.
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Great link, Robin. The author discusses topics that I had in mind for a long time but didn't have a common name for them. Natural noises, that's it!
Badly designed noise textures tend to repeat themselves quickly, thus becoming meaningless. Natural leather grows by a pattern, that's true, but the process has flaws. The animal knows somehow that skin has a roughness of 0.6 and crack depth of 0.05mm. Though, at some part of the process, anomalies happen. Then during the lifetime some cells get damaged, as on your own skin. That's the variance
Even if the detail is not exactly tiled, it is not enough, unless there will be random spots of brighter value. You need some other patterns, bigger than the base noise frequency.
So the advice to take patterns from photos is both simple and great.
Thinking with layers could be useful too. Look what NDO does... they even have nice names for them:
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That is the reference I used. Would reducing the gloss map help me to achieve that? Or should I go in another direction with this?
In the brown leather it's also due to dirt. In the second, I wonder whether it's more roughness variance or height variance. Oh and I noticed one thing - there are smaller cracks and bigger cracks (subtly visible, but still, the real photo doesn't look "tiled"
Still, your sofa looks like it's not so far away. More roughness maybe. But the problem Grimsonfart mentioned really exists.
So... maybe it's about model now? Too artificial, too smooth? Like a balloon, the air pressure smoothening the folds to zero? Maybe you should allow some gravity here, some wobbliness.
http://imgur.com/Tc7Kfu3
Seriously though mentioned above, you need some variance in that albedo.
Check out this tutorial, it talkes a lot about natural noise and variation.
Once you've started getting the feel of leather down you should add some wear to is, make it feel used. Has this couch been sitting in a dark storage container for all time or is it exposed to the sunlight and have parts of it been bleached slightly. Have people spilled coffee on it or have there been other stains.
An example of wear. Just did a quick job, details should be smaller. Better of doing this in a 3d painting app rather than in PS.
Great link, Robin. The author discusses topics that I had in mind for a long time but didn't have a common name for them. Natural noises, that's it!
Badly designed noise textures tend to repeat themselves quickly, thus becoming meaningless. Natural leather grows by a pattern, that's true, but the process has flaws. The animal knows somehow that skin has a roughness of 0.6 and crack depth of 0.05mm. Though, at some part of the process, anomalies happen. Then during the lifetime some cells get damaged, as on your own skin. That's the variance
Even if the detail is not exactly tiled, it is not enough, unless there will be random spots of brighter value. You need some other patterns, bigger than the base noise frequency.
So the advice to take patterns from photos is both simple and great.
Thinking with layers could be useful too. Look what NDO does... they even have nice names for them: