3D artistry

I've been working on a project that needs some realistic looking hull plating, and I've been struggling a bit with getting it to look right. I'm not sure if I'm just not adding enough greebles, or if there's a simpler way to do this that I'm overlooking. I tried originally to accomplish the idea with some textures and UV mapping, and I wasn't satisfied with the results. After that, I tried extruding some odd squares in and out just a hair from the normal level of the hull, and then texturing those with a few different shades of the same hull metal texture. However, it's still a bit off, for lack of a better way to describe it. Does anyone have any suggestions or techniques that they use to create a realistic looking hull? I'm thinking something that looks like it's seen some abuse, like plates welded on and stuff. I know a few of you have created some great looking ships. Thanks!

First off, I don't know much about modeling or texturing, but I have seen people painting plastic jets with as much realism as possible. You take a picture in the right light and the right place and you would swear it was the real thing!

Anyway, back to the topic. What THEY did on a silver jet was to paint different panels different shades of silver or grey. Another touch of over realism is a logo that runs over panel lines. Perhaps a ships logo that is like WWII that is painted on and therefore, uneven. If you have seen the end of the movie Serenity, the ship's name wasn't stenciled.

I think you might get more responses posting this in Just Chat, where there appear to be at least a couple of active members who do this sort of thing on a regular basis.

I'll give that a shot, R&D, thanks!

@ Vast Deathmaster: I'm actually doing this for the Firefly TC, ironically. I see what you're saying, though, with the decals and stuff going over uneven deck plates. I'm trying to do this with a relatively low-poly solution, though, and that's my big fear with adding a lot of extra greebles. Render times start going through the roof when you start doing that. But I think I might be able to accomplish what you're suggesting with UV texturing... Anyways, thanks!

I've gotten reasonably good results by advoiding spheres as much as possible, and then just applying a grunged-up flat texture with some lines over the whole thing. It may take a little bit of fiddling, but it can look pretty good, especially at the scales Nova works with.

I'll try that. I haven't been messing with spheres very much, except in instances where I end up scaling them out at the middle to make a sort of UFO shape for space stations.