It feels a little tongue-in-cheek to me.
A friend who is also an artist, mentioned that textures should look even instead of having darker areas. Though he admitted to the fact that he doesn't know why either. I think I can understand it in newer games since many now allow for self-shadows and all new kinds of shading. But for a game like Descent 3, you don't really have any shadows per-say.
I used noise and a filter to create that worn look underneath the scratches. However, I also know that the scratches seem a little big. The other problem, will be that the worn metal underneath won't bump-map, though the scratches and text should.
I would like to make it look like it has rust and a coat of primer along with realistic scratches. The scratches are also too wide, but that is an effect of low-resolution textures. I have been creating the textures in low-resolution from the start so that I could stretch and organize the UV maps to take in as much sharp detail as possible. However, at low resolution, I'm finding that it is much more difficult to create textures that show tiny detail like rust and scratches.
I'm also finding that my workflow is incredibly slow texture-wise. I'm starting to think that perhaps I should start with a high resolution texture with the model laid out nicely into one texture and organize the textures and the UV's into different textures later?
Also, is bump-mapping allowed for weapons in D3? If not, I may just fix the scratches and some of the shading and leave it be for weapons.
