looks good, a lot of work - well done

Free! Free! Free! Use them wisely!

Disclaimer: The following is artistic criticism, not any sort of negative mindless hate.

You've not taken it far enough. The diff cloud is a little obvious, I'd pull it back some. Take some of the blacks out, they're too heavy.

Your shapes are good, but they're too uniform. Spend some time damaging the panels instead of letting the Diff cloud do the work. Also, if you're gonna put in lighting (the panels dark v light edges) keep the light source uniform.

Manually put metallic highlights on your hard edges, right now it reads as plastic, not metal. And add some fake ambient occlusion to overlapping pieces. Another 2-3 hrs of work and this could be a nice piece.

Attached is a quick once over I've done on a small piece of the texture. Now, I can't compensate for your Diff clouds, I'm just painting over what you've got, but see the difference in how much less flat you can make it in just a few minutes? Really easy tricks.



By no means is this my little doodle representative of finished level quality. But you've got the resolution, so use it! Also, this is a choice thing, but I'd refrain from using a 'stamp' pattern like that metal plating backdrop. You can do so much better with just your own work.

Well, it's a little more than that. What I did was pull out some of the blacks using Curves/Levels. I didn't have the base PSD, so I had to just use a blunt force method, but with the layers intact, there are easier ways to do it.

As for the edges, use a 1px hard brush with a white+basecolor for edge highlights. And again, look at your big panels. The lightsource isnt matching up. Instead of using the layer style Bevel, hand paint the panels using two layers. The upper layer should be Light and the lower layer should be Shadow. Paint with a white+basecolor broad hard brush for your highlighted edges, and dark grey brush for your shadow edges. Always use one lightsource - I usually use upper left corner @ 45 degrees. That way on every panel, if the panel is raised, the top edge and left edge are highlighted, and the bottom edge and lower edge are shadow. If the panel is inset, the reverse is true. You'll get a more clear reading that way.

Also, using a Diff Cloud is a good way to make a base texture, but also try combining it via an Overlay layer using a texture from www.cgtextures.com. They're royalty free and usually pretty decent quality. Find a decent metal texture to use as a base, most of them are pre-tiled, so no worries there.

I have a really good test texture I built laying around somewhere. I'll try to find it and post it here so you can see what I mean.

I have not the same functionalities in photoshop, what photoshop do you use?

Giving me a demo file is a good idea! Send me it via a private message.

I use CS6 Extended.

Groups should be creatable by selecting the layers you want to group and then hitting either the folder icon in the bottom of the layer tray or CRTL+G

I'll record a demo video, maybe tonight when I get back from class on what I know about texture tricks for PS. I might do a series on using dDo and nDo to create really nice diffuse textures.

Did you check out http://www.moddb.com/games/freelancer/addons/hd-textures-12 to combine your efforts?