Nice stuff Tinman, thanks for this.
Totally agree with using Max's procedurals in bump slot (and elsewhere if you want even!) to add more natural, quick variation to break it up... you can also use the same maps rendered out to diffuse as masks for wear and tear (similar to what pior outlined in one of his tutorials).
Thanks for posting this tinman its really helped me in making my current environment. Could you elaborate on how your made the specular map that I've shown. Maybe special brushes or filters? Thanks
once i had the diffuse done i duped the PSD and messed it up from there. I would push the contrast of some layers, increase saturation etc. Then I did use some cut up brushes with scattering and such to throw dirt on the surfaces, you can see it the most on the blue piece at the top.
The thing about specular maps is pretty much every shader/engine/renderer handles them differently, which is kinda crazy since they've been around about as long as diffuse maps. So your spec map may not have to be this blown out or bright, this is just what I did to get the result in the viewport that I wanted. A general rule though is to actually take time to make your spec map work, I see too many people just trying to use a desaturated diffuse map with a filter or two and leaving it at that, each map deserves love.
I believe the reason the gloss maps are different per engine is the render engineer uses different values for what a grey pixel is. He needs to set a baseline on the game so the shader knows how bright medium grey pixels are, then you can tune the shader in game if you're lucky and modulate the gloss map from it's min and max values that can be achieved in a 255 colour range. I think the problem is that an 8bit image does not have enough bit depth to achieve certain looks, same thing with heightmaps you really want 16 or 24bit images to get a full range of intensity. Hence some engines need really dark gloss maps because they want the ability to go really bright in a 255 range.
Replies
Totally agree with using Max's procedurals in bump slot (and elsewhere if you want even!) to add more natural, quick variation to break it up... you can also use the same maps rendered out to diffuse as masks for wear and tear (similar to what pior outlined in one of his tutorials).
The thing about specular maps is pretty much every shader/engine/renderer handles them differently, which is kinda crazy since they've been around about as long as diffuse maps. So your spec map may not have to be this blown out or bright, this is just what I did to get the result in the viewport that I wanted. A general rule though is to actually take time to make your spec map work, I see too many people just trying to use a desaturated diffuse map with a filter or two and leaving it at that, each map deserves love.
PS: garbagetown.
Tnx Tin