How do I make modular textures in Photoshop?

gameofscones

So I've come across some Destiny texture work by Sid Moye, and I'm wondering how the texturing of the diffuse channel is achieved. There's a lot of ways to achieve the normal, and AO channels with zbrush, nDo, or even just high poly 3ds max assets baked down. But the diffuse has me stumped. It looks hand painted, but I really like the subtle grunge effect everything has going. Can anyone point me to some photoshop tutorials that go over painting textures like this? Or if I'm completely wrong, can you tell me how these textures are made? Thanks in advance!

Noth

for the level of complexity it looks like the fastest way to create these would be in photoshop. The normal maps are very accruate though so maybe he used NDO along with it.

throttlekitty

Looks like an NDO workflow to me too, I'd take a guess that they had made the textures first with the models in mind. These could also be modeled, baked then textured in PS. Imagine that the models look basically like the normal maps here, laid out flat in sheets just as they appear.

The workflow is relatively simple, there's many NDO video tuts to give you an idea. You start with the ID and normal maps. ID gives you a quick way to select each region. With AO and Curvature from Normal, you set those up as different blend layers, or as masks. It's real subtle or barely used here, but it's common to take the curvature edges, and rough the masks up a little so they don't look like solid outlines. Diffuse is just getting in with some blocky/grungy brushes for color variation.

Synaesthesia

That definitely has some NDO-like aspects to it. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing a lot of NDO in my time.

gameofscones

Thanks for the input guys! I'll take a crack at replicating something like this. I appreciate all the help.