Gliese

[Meph]

You're almost making me blush guys
I'm not going to do a full blown tutorial at this point but I'll rant a bit on the do's and don'ts :-)

Step one: Work on high resolutions, you can always tune down, never up. The texture for that wing which I've shown is actually around 4100 x 2800 pixels at 300 dpi, the psd is about 280MB, the png used for the texture is about 7MB a piece. As a reference on my ship the Olympic, just for the upper bow section, I'm working on 8000 x 3000 pixels at 300 dpi, making a psd of around 700MB and a png of around 15MB. Size DOES matter!

Step two... and this has been THE revelation to me a few years ago. Per unwrapped object, make your ENTIRE texture in one PSD, work with Folder AND layers. Make a folder called 'Diffuse' and under there put all the layers that make up the diffuse or 'paint job' of your model. When satisfied, copy that folder, rename it 'Specular', add a 50% grey base layer, desaturate all layers, delete any uncecesarry layers (you don't need you base colour or camo scheme here etc etc ) and change and add new ones as needed (extra scratches and weathering, a colourful logo needs just it's silhouette in white or black for instance.)
Do the same for bump and opacity as needed for your model.
This way your entire texture stays in one big psd file and it's easy to hide/unhide groups and save them for your texture.
Another golden advice. Don't save your textures as jpg's but as png's, even though png's are bigger and heavier, max handles them more efficiently because jpg's are actually too compressed in size and max has to put more effort in applying them.

Hmmm it's been ages that I've used the standard materials, I'm using vray for Max since a while. But if I remember correctly, a good metal you'll have with a specular level around 240-250 and a specularity around 20-30. The thing is; on a plain, smooth material, this will create large, even spots of 'reflection' on the geometry as the specular level is very concentrated, The key to breaking that up to a more 'realistic' level is in the bump and specular. Your bump indeed is way to heavy right now. The thing with bump, escpecially on 'smooth' surfaces like wings etc etc... that it has to be very subtle. Halve your bump map value and make sure that there is no black outlines to the paint in your bump map. Remember that paint is painted on and not carved out of the wing. If on your bump you're also working with a cloud or noise map to give some depth to the paint, use it very, very subtly. The goal is to catch and break the light a bit, not to show the damage some madman with a hammer has done your plane.

As for specular, the easiest way to wrap your head around it is like this; the specular settings of your material define how reflective your mat is but it's a uniform reflection, just one blotch in relation where the light is coming from and you want to break this up because only brand new things are this shiny. Any depth or height from bump mapping or geometry creates areas for the light to bounce from but you don't want to make an aircraft wing look like the skin of an orange. This is where the specular map comes in. A 50% gey value means the value you assigned to your material, anything whiter will be shinier, anything darker will be more matte.

So what do you want shinier? Any scratches that go through the paint to the metal, some higlights on the edges of paleling, or leading edge of a wing, different paint used for logo's, some general and subtle noise/large cloud/scratches to break up the reflection etc etc...

What do you want darker? Basically any dirt, grime, rust, impact marks, area's that get handled a lot etc etc... Also some general noise/cloud to break up the eveness but keep it subtle.

Notice on my Specular and bump map for the wing that I avoid using 100% black or white unless absolutely necesarry since every shade of grey defines a changed specular value, true white might reflect too hard and vice versa for black. Subtlety is the key with just a few harder accents here and there.

My advice is to keenly look at a lof of high-res photo's of military aircraft, look for the ones where they're standing or flying against the light so that you can see how the light reflects on their wings. Since most smooth military aircraft aren't covered in rust of flaked paint or typical heavy weathering, almost all of your weathering needs to come from your specular and bump mapping. The paint job is usually quite uniform with just some subtle deviations in tone and colour and some small rust and black dirt and grime here and there but when you change the viewing angle toward the light source, that's when it comes to life, all the little scratches catching the light, the dirt sucking it up, some small bumps here and there in the metal creating different shades etc etc.

Some real-life pictures to illustrate
http://www.defence.gov.au/pitchblack...AUG04PC129.jpg
Take a good look at the shine on the engine intake, how that feathers aways into the hull colour... Where it shines is determined by the physical shape but that soft feathering can be achieved by some general noise/cloud in the specular.
http://militaryvideo.ru/mkportal/mod...bum/a_2767.jpg
Take a look on the white bit next to the cockpit, that's where the gun is. notice the subtle black dirt there and how matte it is? Again specular but no bump...

Bump is just used to accentuate the paint- or dirt effect ever so slightly. But remember, not everything white or dark in the specular has to stick out or -in on the bump. For instance a heavy scratch in paint might be white in specular to make it more shiny but dark in the bump to have it slightly recessed in the paint since it's 'scratched out' of the paint. The black soot from gunfire might dirty up a map and makes it less shiny but it doesn't dent the paint (no bump then). Keep thinking clearly and logically like this and you'll get there in no time.


I hope this was a push in the right direction

LOL, I just noticed that all this post needs are a few screenshots and some more elaborate explanation and it's almost a full tutorial

[Elowan]

Another note on jpgs vs pngs. Pngs take up more space on your HD than jpegs but less memory during a render. Jpegs get HUGE when loaded into an app,

[kborak]

Wow meph I think you added everything that wasnt in the tut I did last. Ty so mych for the help.

And I had no idea about jpegs getting bigger and being harher to use, you guys are such a big help. ty all!

[kborak]

a little work after reading mephs not a tutorial. I think Im getting the hang of this!

[Berkut]

yep, getting better, I think the bump is still too strong on the stars, they look practically carved out

@Meph, TY very much!! You definately answered some of the major questions I've had and described well some things I was doing wrong. And yeah you might as well post that into tutorials, lol.

[kborak]

@berkut yeah I think your right about the stars a lighter shade is needed there.

[Meph]

I'm glad I could help guys!

Mmmm, yeah, definately loose the black in the bump mapping for the star, now it looks like the edges are carved out and that the yellow is on top of the red one. I'd just give the entire silhouette for the start a light grey so that the entrie star stucks up just a tiny bit. Oh, and the bump in general is a bit too heavy too atm...

Another nice hint I'll give ya... go find and download more photoshop brushes. It's dang easy to do fancy scratches and dirt that way

[kborak]

hrrm I didnt know you could get more brushes for photoshop. TY. I have always used fireworks for stuff so using photoshop has been somewhat of a learning experiance as well. we will see what I can come up with later today.

[kborak]

ok I have reworked the fuesalage on the mig due to the ever changing story. A different tech is being applied to her than before. I like the look of the new fuesalage and am sticking with this one. The wings are about 95% done being modeled and the texture that is on it now is taking all the tips that have been left and puttting them to use. Texturing is deffinitley more fun that I expected it to be.

[Meph]

Hehe, yup, the more you get the hang of texturing, the more fun it becomes; I've spent many an afternoon, happily painting and drawing the large texture I used for the Olympic.

That's some seriously nice progress that you're showing mate. If I compare this pic to the ones with the black wings... I'm also liking the new hull.