Gunship: Renewed enthusiasm.

 After the consolidation steps left the gunship full of holes and misdirected/corrupted normals, I thought I might need a break and worried that this might be one of those breaks that becomes permanent. Happily, on Sunday morning, I decided that the break I needed was to take a look at the materials. As the gunship is aimed at commercial release, and I've not had good experiences with Sanctus baked textures, I committed to creating some proper hull materials.

I found this tutorial on YouTube:
How to Texture Spaceships like ILM (in Blender Cycles (A real eye-opener!)

The basic approach of the material is as follows:

1. Base texture map for hull plates.
2. Use a Colour Ramp to set a base colour and soften the texture.
3. Add some light scratches with a grunge map, use a Mix RGB to blend with the base texture.
4. Stick a Map Range after the base texture, reduce the MAX so that the wear is not uniform.
5. Add a grunge texture and run it through an Ambient Occlusion node using the Distance input to add dirt into the object's inset details, such as between hull plates.
6. Use a Map Range on the input grunge map so it isn't too uniform.
7. In this case, I replicated the resulting hull material and added a colour tint. Then, I used a mask to pop out some areas for leak stains and replaced hull panels.

Rince and repeat!

Result

    

Next up:

• Back to modelling to fix more stuff, maybe some replacement pipes on the top of the hull.
• More small details on those edge rims.
  
• More details underneath (not a huge priority)
• More materials, such as the engine vents and displacement on the vector fins.
• More lamps.
• Fix the lights in the cockpit.
• New scans of Noah and Leo for the crew.