I think mbullister's example shows that a multilayered surface does look much better and more realistic than just diffuse with a flat normal. Sure its more expensive, but thats what fallbacks are for. Having the extra specular layer really helps the perception of the material. On a side note, with unreal moving to deferred…
not if you build your own shader in unreal, then you can plug in a different normalmap or try if you can get away with the normals of your mesh, i guess if its dense enough it could work. But its mostly just a matter of what you think you can do, my solution would usually not end up in a game for beeing pretty heavy on the…
3dsmax 2012 has an awesome carbon fiber substance material that you can bake. Outside of that I really don't see much of a need for complex shaders or even a normal map for the pattern. Often when you coat something it looses its specular properties. If I was to start dreaming up shaders, I would start looking into adding…