Starting with the UVs; many sections of the UV layout are the same. So you could have reused those sections of the material instead of giving it all unique space so that overall you'd have higher pixel density. On the other hand, had you uniquely painted the texture, this wouldn't be the case.
For the texturing itself;
The biggest problem here is you didn't actually paint anything (if you did it's not noticeable, and that's a bad thing). Using photo overlays is fine, especially depending on the style, but your materials should look good without not completely reliant on them.
Secondly, there is no determinable difference between material types beyond saturation. As in, your wood has wood grain as intended, but your metal has scratches that look exactly the same as the wood grain. And the rope, also appears to be scratches but light tan colored.
The normal map isn't really doing anything for you here. At least, not anything good. See that black spot on top? That's due to that gradient of lighting information going across your boards. There's cases where you want this, but in this one it's causing a lighting bug. Basically all your getting out of this normal is a few rivets and the rope in a couple spots.
Wood and rope usually doesn't need much specular information.
In conclusion, I would recreate all materials with no photo overlays actually painting the textures and sculpting/baking the normal until it's looking great. Then, considering some material overlays after reducing their noise. But I also believe you should invest more time in the base mesh beyond primitive boxes and 6-sided cylindars so that all details are recognizable before doing this.
I hardly see any grain in the normal map. Bump it up more so it doesn't look so flat (just the grain though if it's possible, the rest is explained by my comrade above).
Your rope looks like cylinders scaled down and turned sideways in hopes of it representing a rope. Darker dark's for the crevasse in the ropes so that it doesn't look flat and gives it a better rope feel.
paint some sand-coloured grunge around the areas where one piece joins to another
make the metal joints (which im pretty sure are anachronistic btw) more prominent
Don't bother trying to hand-paint wood or metal if you're after something that's photoreal. The trick is a proper mix of both. Chris (cholden) touched on it nicely for you.
hey man ok so your normal map has no visible texture too it at all. and also the photo use is a bit abusive here. anyways if u are using n-videa's normal map filter which i am going to assume u are because zbrush or mudbox wouldnt create one that looked like that if u had sculpted it, u will want to crank your scale up to around 3-5 range a scale of 1 is usually only used for renormalizing when adding a bump to a sculpted normals map.
woogity... What? Hes obviously modelled some form of high poly, you can tell by the shading on the normal map. Most likely what hes done is made his normal map, and then blended another texture over the top to create a slight effect, something we all do now and again in some form. The trouble is, he just used it too lightly.
Now, thats not a major issue. In most games that will look perfectly fine, after all, you dont need a really deep normal for wood. The problem here is his light setup, which clearly isn't making the normal pop as much as it should do.
He can obviously improve this by tweaking both the intensity of the wood detail overlay on his normal map, AND tweaking the light setup of his render.
good call, i overlooked that in my initial post anyways that was the purpose of the power comment for Nvidea's plug-in. if thats what he used it looks like his power was set to 1-2. also the rope needs some work looks too smooth right now kinda vinelike. gl on fixes!
Replies
Starting with the UVs; many sections of the UV layout are the same. So you could have reused those sections of the material instead of giving it all unique space so that overall you'd have higher pixel density. On the other hand, had you uniquely painted the texture, this wouldn't be the case.
For the texturing itself;
The biggest problem here is you didn't actually paint anything (if you did it's not noticeable, and that's a bad thing). Using photo overlays is fine, especially depending on the style, but your materials should look good without not completely reliant on them.
Secondly, there is no determinable difference between material types beyond saturation. As in, your wood has wood grain as intended, but your metal has scratches that look exactly the same as the wood grain. And the rope, also appears to be scratches but light tan colored.
The normal map isn't really doing anything for you here. At least, not anything good. See that black spot on top? That's due to that gradient of lighting information going across your boards. There's cases where you want this, but in this one it's causing a lighting bug. Basically all your getting out of this normal is a few rivets and the rope in a couple spots.
Wood and rope usually doesn't need much specular information.
In conclusion, I would recreate all materials with no photo overlays actually painting the textures and sculpting/baking the normal until it's looking great. Then, considering some material overlays after reducing their noise. But I also believe you should invest more time in the base mesh beyond primitive boxes and 6-sided cylindars so that all details are recognizable before doing this.
Your rope looks like cylinders scaled down and turned sideways in hopes of it representing a rope. Darker dark's for the crevasse in the ropes so that it doesn't look flat and gives it a better rope feel.
EDIT: Dang ninja!
make the metal joints (which im pretty sure are anachronistic btw) more prominent
Can you recommend any good tutorials on how to paint wood and metal textures?
-Woog
Now, thats not a major issue. In most games that will look perfectly fine, after all, you dont need a really deep normal for wood. The problem here is his light setup, which clearly isn't making the normal pop as much as it should do.
He can obviously improve this by tweaking both the intensity of the wood detail overlay on his normal map, AND tweaking the light setup of his render.
-Woog
ok so i cant find the link
Concerning your speculars and handpaint textures in general terms, a lighting tutorial is a must:
http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/tutorials/light01.htm
Excellent tutorial by our very own stud,harry