the flats are kinda awful imo. If your going to put multiple types in one frame (which I have been told by all the big studios is a bad idea, yeah mine are setup that way too) do it in a way thats organized, not just have like a rim on the top/right be the normal and the rest diffuse. TBH just do them separately, im going…
I've already plugged this elsewhere, but Racer himself has a tutorial on CGTuts+ about hand-painting metal textures, it's certainly applicable to weapons and such. http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photoshop/how-to-hand-paint-convincing-metal-textures/ Another CGTuts+ tutorial, this one by Xoliul, has some info on…