Need critique on hand painted texture

Nebbmus

This is my first attempt at hand painted stuff and would like some help to know what to improve upon.


model

The texture map

AtticusMars

1) General piece of painting advice: Lay your UVs out so that things are right side up, it's much more intuitive to texture that way

2) You don't have a consistent lighting direction. This is by far the most common problem with beginner work in hand painting. Pick a lighting direction and stick to it. If it will help, build a high poly model and do a bake to get your basic lighting information and just paint over it.

3) Most of your scratches are on the flat side of the blade, this doesn't make a lot of sense

4) Your edge highlights are the same brightness across the entire surface of the blade, this is really something you should avoid in my opinion. Use your edge highlights sparingly and don't apply them evenly across your entire mesh, otherwise you get what you have which is a very wire-frame look.

5) Your brushwork is extremely muddy and I would highly suggest you simplify if a lot. It is clear you painted with extremely low opacity, I'd suggest using a higher opacity and being more deliberate with your brushwork.

Did a paintover to demonstrate what I would do:

Nebbmus

@AtticusMars Thanks so much for all of the tips, you´re awesome man

Toafaloaf

This is a really neat texturing workshop from school of game design . Just thought I would share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GWVez_UHM&t=2097s