A Metal Vase. Asking for help!

erebus9

Just a Vase i've done for the monthly challenge but it took me some time to finish it (kinda). 

I would like to ask for some help regarding the questions i got still not resolved...May be it's just my eyes got foggy because i had to look at that vase for too many times and can't already judge how it turned out or may be i am right and there is certainly some obvious issues with that, please help me find out the right answer to that ultimate question!

I divided my main concers into 3 questions:

1. Actually i am confused as how it turned out because i don't have a feeling that the metal material and the grunge on it look realistic and fits well, yet i can't figure out what is wrong, nor could i find a good reference that would explain to me how a subtle detail like dust or grunge is being collected over time on a metallic object and how shall it look

2. Another pain in the ass was to make it look good both up close and from far and i don't think i've succeed with this one either

3. When i was creating grunge and dust in substance painer i tried to play with the color of it, the roughness and the metallic(making it not fully dielectric) values, tried different combinations and it still doesn't feel right

May be some of you guys can help me with this, because i actually spent a lot of time on it and still being not satisfied with the result

The reference

sacboi

From my point of view, firstly decide whether this piece is purely decorative or votive.

In other words the former could belong anywhere indoors or out but typically if the latter, then most often an object of devotion will reside in a purpose built covered shrine which generally determines what level of patina, to apply. 

However just from eyeballing perhaps figure out your materials. For example seems to me that the vase is made up of pewter, brass and copper? as to the plinth, maybe some sort of soft limestone i.e. Caen stone due to amount of damage chipped off and divided by sections of Basalt?

I'll also add, that stone can become highly polished because of human touch/rubbing, over many generations. 

erebus9

sacboi said:

From my point of view, firstly decide whether this piece is purely decorative or votive.

In other words the former could belong anywhere indoors or out but typically if the latter, then most often an object of devotion will reside in a purpose built covered shrine which generally determines what level of patina, to apply. 

However just from eyeballing perhaps figure out your materials. For example seems to me that the vase is made up of pewter, brass and copper? as to the plinth, maybe some sort of soft limestone i.e. Caen stone due to amount of damage chipped off and divided by sections of Basalt?

I'll also add, that stone can become highly polished because of human touch/rubbing, over many generations. 

I really like your thought process, as for the metal i also thought that it look like pewter and worked with a corresponding reference, others like brass/copper i just basically changed the color (shame on me). Not sure if i will dig that deep and start it from ground zero, although on the other side it's just the textures so who knows...
Also your caen stone guess seem like an accurate one to me, whilst i just used a reference of some old plinth from a bidding antique site

teodar23

I would create a mask from ao, curvature and a grunge map an use that as a starting point for roughness. Fiddle with that until you get something with more variation 
I would also add some blurred noise as a normal - masked by ao - in order to create some dents and wobbling in the surface

erebus9

teodar23 said:

I would create a mask from ao, curvature and a grunge map an use that as a starting point for roughness. Fiddle with that until you get something with more variation 
I would also add some blurred noise as a normal - masked by ao - in order to create some dents and wobbling in the surface

Thanks for the tip!
I've done that, after working with the roughness pass i tackled the diffuse and metallic, added slight amount of color to those grunges, there are multiple layers of them, tried different blending modes, stopped at simple overlay or darken, also had issues with what color to choose, — because if i make my dust/grunge kind of light color, with the value 0.3 it will be almost always be washed out completely and leave no visible effect on the material, so i had to select more dark colors.

For example if you look at 2nd image at the repeating circle pattern below the main sigil, you may ( if you really try it hard ) notice the grunge i've put in the cavity area of this pattern, but it's barely visible. If i decide to make it more prominent, then it will be like heavily saturated brown color grunge, which i believe not how it should be in real world, otherwise working with little saturated colors i result in my grunge mostly being washed out

Also about normal map large scale detail - i tried, but didnt stick with that because to me it wasn't really noticeable  but making the vase look more dirty work where you put everything you can - all types of the smart masks, material finishes and other great tools of SP ( no sarcasm there, just mean that if used expensively it result in "overheat" or "overload" of details, let's call it this way), which i also tried to avoid...

teodar23

Can you post an image with the roughness pass? I think you may have low contrast / not enough variation so the metal looks more or less the same

erebus9

teodar23 said:

Can you post an image with the roughness pass? I think you may have low contrast / not enough variation so the metal looks more or less the same

Sure, here they are, all main three passes - Rough, Metallic and Diff