Thanks guys, Its just a rough drawing, not my
best
Um I would say it takes me a few hours. 1 hour to clean up the textures generated from max, 2-3 hours (depending on the mesh) to paint and blend the textures to my liking.
I want my thread to be educational, I hope that something that I have learned might be helpful to others.
I'm going to post a series of shots that show some techniques I use when working on the details for my textures. For now removing the silly Gauge I had on my light and adding a kind of panel.
1: I started with a shape (square) then added a layer effect to create a outer shadow.
2: Then I created a black stripe and copied it 3 times placing it evenly. Rotated it and masked it to the square (a quick way to do this is with the wand tool, clicking on the square in the other layer then adding a mask on the stripes layer. I then added a blending mode to help elevate the metal behind it. I also painted on to the mask with a rough brush to chip away at the sides.
3: To make the screw heads I created a circle and added the blending modes you see there, it did all the work for me.
4: this layer was placed behind some grunge to give the final result you see there.
5: when generating the normal its important I turn of all the shadows etc.
The seams and rivets on the pipe texture were made much the same way. you can see the bending options used to make the seam here.