Your spec is much more important then your diffuse here. Make sure that you are creating them at the same time. Your diffuse details will be relatively light on the wear and tear. Alot of your detail will just be unique to your spec.
just started painting my diffuse, had a few baking problems but i was able to fix em and paint over a few issues :P anyway here's where its at right now. Still very much a work in progress As always any tips to make it look better are greatly appreciated :\
I darkened the metal a bit but was afraid of making it blend with the plastic handle too much. Hmm, seems like there's more wear and tear in these areas: And as Quack! pointed out, that wear would be more in the specular than in the diffuse. Here's my first render of it, definitely wanna go back into the spec and give it…