The armor is really washed out and the details aren't that visible. Sure, it looks awesome at night, but looking good half the time isn't ideal.
If you look back at the development shots I posted of the armor, you'll probably notice the slew of smoothing groups I created for each component. Those groups produced the "details" that distinguished one piece from another. An example being the plating around the visor on the helmet.
I set these groups up to help me see what the model would look like before I started texturing. I thought they would be enough to convey the same message when placed in game. That's not to say they don't help, but small lighting changes can't always compete with the normal and specular maps which produce much stronger effects.
Now, I have the original textures for reference, but they aren't that great. I mean, they look good in game, but when you look at them directly, they're very noisy with very faint scratches that are obscured by said noise. I look at these textures and go, "Well now what?"
Since I generate the normal and specular maps from the diffuse and rarely make major modifications, my initial texture was flawed from the get-go. While I do have separate groups for each of the texture types, I kept them somewhat similar. Increased contrast here, toned down details there, but nothing dramatic.
To solve my texture problem, I've decided to go to the root of my texture and start again. I've added a lot of shading/hightlights/scratches/grunge, increased the visibility of details (what used to be 20% opacity is now 50%), increased the strength of the noise, and cleaned up the dragon's jagged appearance. The specular map has contrast increased twice (100 followed by 30 or so) and a higher brightness to compensate. The normal map now covers every piece of armor instead of un-modelled details.
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| New diffuse vs old diffuse |
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| That's a bit better |
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