Leather hidr texture or sculpt?
polycounter lvl 14
How would you procede to make a realistic game texture for leather? Zbrushing it iu and aven the leather pores and such ? Or painting most of ut and may be after extract normal map details withba crazybimp or similar programs? And how you would go for making it look realistic? I have tried both and the layered in stack a generic tecture o leather under a occlusion map , added some photoshop highlights and shadows but tge result is pretty noob ..... Im tryng to do the leather look for a vonan leather circlet so is not a modern leather like sifas or jackets 
...
...
Replies
Also, here's some advice i was given 25 years ago that's stuck with me because its brilliant advice...
Draw what you see, not what's there.
Work on observation above all other skills - nobody can tell you now to make something look the way you want, we can tell you how to achieve a technical goal but can't pull an image out of your head and explain how to make it.
As for leather, i usually just Google up some appropriate leather, clone it about a bit and add some shading
Btw I did try the cavity too in xnormal but it comes out a purple texture that had nothing of a cavity , also the occlusion is very washed out in xnormal , any way I can improve or do it in zbrush may be?
the only good thing coming out better in xnormal is the normal map itself that for some reason the Zbrush one gets offsetted on borders ....
but the problem is that I dunno why I need to split into pieces the model for xnormal to get a decent normal map it doesn't take all the subtools of zbrush to make a good texture or I am missing something?
Why that I used a mesh that has UV map finely done and I could create even normal map and export in zbrush but then why asks me this and desn't create it?
May be because I used a decimated model?
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/6011/71925906.jpg
Did you preserve the UVs during the decimation process? It would wipe them out otherwise since it's changing the topology and all.
That map problem is the same from the other thread, UVs are most likely touching the borders.
I get the best results projecting the alphas in areas of tension and near edges and then working them in with the trim dynamic soft brush. Global micro texture rarely looks good - especially after a bake. Also a light touch is best with this sort of thing.
What's wrong here?
When I import the mesh in Zbrush says mismatch points-order in the imported mesh , was detected and auto-corrected....
if not - you're in for a world of pain and this could be one of many symptoms.
the bad news is that if you didnt use it when you exported the original base, using it now probably wont help.
Otherwise duplicate the mesh, delete the higher subdivision levels, run UV Master using existing UV seams, flatten it, scale the islands with transpose, unflatten, copy the UVs and then paste them back onto the original.
they come all overlapping or something wrong dunno why .... I exported each of the subtools and loaded as high poly then loaded the low poly that is the same base mesh of the zbrush , then I even placed a plane on high poly for the occlusion , well apart dthat doesnt take some normals others get projected on other meshes ...
Edit:
Ok now that's weird according to the normal map in xnormal some rivets I added shoudl look halved instead are fine
Mah ....
Anyway I really want to fix that normal map thing and cavity issues in Zbrush ... may be I shoudl use GOZ?