Fat Hammer - Game ready asset
"Fat Hammer" Grenade Launcher Minigun (concept by Billy Wimblett)
The whole idea of this project was to challenge myself to do something I don't really like - I don't like weapons, not a big fan of a hard surface and don't like all those super low-poly models. Plus I don't use Arnold much, I never GPU rendered before, never skipped high poly sculpt, etc.
My regular pipeline is usually to create low-poly, then sculpt in Zbrush, then bake and texture in Substance Painter and render in Marmoset.
But not this time:
I completely skipped a high-poly step (to rebake all details applied in Substance), I manually baked with the explosion in Maya (instead of pushing couple buttons in Marmoset or Substance), textured creating all materials from the scratch - only with fill layers, GPU rendered in Arnold with classic portrait-style lighting, not even HDRI or real-time in Marmoset, and added little finish in Photoshop, like colors tweaking and little vignette.
Despite all habits, the new pipeline curve was very useful to remind myself that literally anything can be done in several ways, plus it was a practice of older skills that I eventually started to forget.
The result is a game-ready, low-poly, 4k texture. The workflow is attached.
I'm a junior 3d Artist with no experience in the industry, asking for some critique on this work - is it alright or is complete garbage?))
Thank you for your time 
Replies
The first things that jump out at me right away is that all the surfaces on the weapon feel very similar. There's not much in the way of material variation/differentiation. Some of the metals are slightly different color, but there's overall not much material contrast. I'd experiment with trying to get more variation between types of metal and/or other material types entirely.
The wear applied to the materials also feels very samey and uniform across the entire weapon. The placement of dust/scratches/wear is very evenly distributed which feels unrealistic. I'd study some reference material for surface types that you want to use on the weapon and pay attention to where you see dirt and dust accumulating, where scratches occur, that sort of thing. Think about which parts of the weapon are going to be touched the most, how it would be used, where surfaces would be exposed to scratches/dings/dents/etc.
It looks like you have a good grasp on the process, you just need more practice studying reference and applying what you see to your materials.
Here's the concept I was working with.
As I said, the project was kinda experimental, so instead of following the stylized concept, I tried to make it more on the realistic side.
Ofc I used the material difference in the project, but I wanted to make it only slightly noticeable, without crazy color variation, since the original concept picked me with its color composition in the first place - all color palette is pretty much in the same range, but at the same time give "characterness" to the weapon.
About weariness - I actually didn't use almost any generator, since the aim was to pursue abilities to eyeball and replicate real-life weariness. That is the best advice there, and I'm already doing my best in material studies now
Thank you again.