Took the critiques under review and made changes accordingly. I stylized the grit texture on the diffuse a bit, reworked the handle grip, and added normal mapping of damage and hand grip using crazy bump. I reworked the specular so it pops more, and I added some tinges of red to create some color variation. I think it…
or there are also 4 icons on the bottom right of the editor. you can toggle them or change the settings there. from left to right Drag Grid, Rotation Grid, Scale Grid, Autosave the checks will toggle them. :D
Some of the needed edge cuts seems to be distibuted all over the model ? Maybe good for concepting but this may should be optimized (for example showing the 3 to 1 quad transition) especially when there are so many planar areas (then even triangles are no problem).. the hood seems to need some of that details (green).…
Tiling is a matter of understanding how tiles function. There's tons of video content out there explaining how to make a tileable texture, but probably not as many for NDO. You need to define how many repetitions you want within the tile: essentially, how many corrugated pieces of metal need to be within your texture. To…
just enable "grid-snap", located in the ribbon before the other snap-icons! the grid adapts to the zoom; see this video for some simple applications of grid-snap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zeF0Gpr0-c&feature=youtu.be
Deselect all faces, then pack. Also, put a grid texture on your model. These grids are better than the default Checker: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Coordinates#UV_Map_Grids If you use a grid with circles, it will be easier to see distortions, and pixel sizes.
You can make a perspective grid in photoshop. Use the Vanishing Point filter and then use the use the Render Grids to Photoshop option. You can even have it place 3d version of your grid into the scene. It's not perfect but it does work.
Because the grid only exists on the XY plane in the perspective view, that's the only way you can snap. AFAIK, you'll have to switch to a side ortho view to grid snap on the Z axis. It'd be nice if the grid was "3D", though.