Skinning Realistic Metal Armour

This tutorial shows you how to texture realistic metal as seen on models such as my medieval footsoldier



It is recommended you use Adobe Photoshop 7.0 or higher for this tutorial.

Step 1: Create the shape
The first step is to select the shape you want with the polygonal lasso tool
Skip this if you know how to use the tool: To use the tool simply select a point on the image where to want to begin the selection and keep clicking around the area, to close up the selection just click on where you started the line.

The next step is to fill in the selected area with the colour of your choice(this colour will be the colour of the metal).
The colour I used was a worn down sand colour(R:190; G:179; B:152)


Step 2: Add detail
The next step is to add detail to the texture.
We should now add a wee bit of noise, I recommend the settings used in the picture.

Now grab a noisey brush and set your brush colour to a dirty colour(something like a dry mud colour, don't make it too dark! I recommend a slightly blurry brush), set the opacity to around 50%.
Now dab the brush around until you have some rather blurry, undefined dirty details(try to keep the dirt around the edges). Do the same with a sharper brush and make sure you don't have too much dirt.
Now grab a solid round brush and set the opacity to 15%, the size should be about 1/8 the size of the whole area, dab the brush around the edges(make sure each dab is a perfect circle, don't drag the brush at all), Don't make these dabs too noticeable. Now you can dab slight bits of burn around if you want(but you don't have to)

Now grab a small, sharp and noisey brush with a dark brown colour(I used R:64; G:42; B:16) and use the same technique as you did with the other brushes(I recommend you drag this brush) and maybe dot the center of the texture as well as the edges

Remember to not make it too uniform, make it look random and messy.

Step 3: Lighting
Now you should grab the dodge tool, make the brush about 1/8 the size of the image, set the range to highlights and the exposure to 25% and(make sure you have a solid brush, not a soft one) then dab the brush across the top of the texture, don't make it too bright. Now set the range to midtones and the exposure to 50% and brush near the center of the highlights you created before.
The result should look like this:

Now grab a reasonably large burn brush and set the range to midtones and the exposure to 25%


Step 4: Scratches
Grab the dodge tool and set the brush size to 1 pixel(yes, just 1), the range to highlights and the exposure to 90%, now begin to decorate the texture with smooth, straight strokes of the brush until you get something like this:

Now take a burn brush with the exact same settings as the dodge brush and do the same(try to keep away from the really bright spots)


Step 5: Discolouration
Create a new layer and grab the brush tool, set the opacity to 60%, begin to dab it with red, blue and green spots until it looks like this:

Now set the layer's opacity to 6% and the blend mode to "Color"


Step 6: Shaping the object
Create a new layer and set the blend mode to "Color Burn" then go to the Edit tab on the top of the screen and select "Stroke..."

Now choose these settings:

Now use the "Gaussian Blur" filter(under "Blur" on the Filters tab) and set the Radius to 5.
Go now to Brightness/Contrast under Image>Adjustments

Set the Brightness to +60 and the Contrast to +60

Now create a new layer and set the blend mode to "Color Dodge" then go to the Select tab and choose Modify>Contract
Contract by 7 pixels. Now do another stroke except this time make the colour pure white, now deselect everything and use the Gaussian Blur filter once more, this time setting the radius to only 2. Now use Brightness/Contrast again and this time set the Brightness to -100 and the Contrast to +45


If you completed the tutorial please post what you came up with, I want to know how well this works.

cool, nice effect jumbo. A bit clumsy since it takes years, but well, it's worth it cause of the realistic result

Very nice tutorial, you don't seem to have left anything out... :)

also, kids, don't forget to use mip maps for skins like these in wc3, or else they'll look very blurry and yellowish.

how do you use mip maps (me ignorant)

Verry nice effect, and verry nice tutorial.

heres my attempt at it:

Yeah, nice.

First time using photoshop and i'm lovin it:D

Looks good, both of you.

Yea what are mip maps?

Yeah, i was just thinking that:\ Anyone willing to explain?:)

That is possibly THEEEEEE coolest thing I have seen done for metal so far

mip maps for textures are like mip maps for models. You basicaly have to make 3 more variations of the texture, each with decreased size on the power of 2. For example, if you have a 256x256 px texture, mip 1 texture would have 128x128, mip 2 64x64 and mip 3 32x32. For wc3, you'll have to name each variation texturename_mip1, texturename_mip2, etc. With the art tools, in 3ds max, when it exports the model and the textures it makes all mip maps into one blp file, so I think that if you just import in the map all variations (in case you don't have art tools) it will work the same.

So mip maps are things like normal and specular maps?

...NO! what on Earth made you think that? as I said, it's just variations of the diffuse map (the only map in wc3) that have nothing modified but the size.

Best metal tutorial ever. I applaud you .