Retextures in photoshop. Oil and dirt help

[kdk11 1]

Hello, I am just wondering if anyone out there can help me out with layers to add "dirt" and "oil" to retextures on helicopters? I am still getting used to the whole retexturing side of things but I have no idea how to add a dirt and oil looking layer to them. Any help would be much appreciated! thanks

[horrorview 10]

I haven't retextured anything in the Arma games yet, but I re-skinned virtually every city in Skyrim with my "Sexy Cities Mods" (lol) and used a variety of approaches to add "grunge" effects to textures. With Photoshop, your best bet is to create the oil and dirt effects from scratch using brushes (there are loads of custom brushes out there. Just Google grunge brushes, dirt brushes, stain brushes, etc). In a new layer, paint your rust, oil, or dirt textures. The better grunge/dirt brushes will look best if you just apply the "paint" with a click rather than dragging it about. Then you can add depth to them (very light bevel/emboss, a touch of drop shadow, etc), and, if you've got the plug-ins (or custom Photoshop Styles, which are also readily available for free. Look for Rust, blood, oil, water, etc), you can also add texture.

Another option is to use transparent .png files. There are loads of them out there, with stuff like blood spatter, etc. Blood spatter can actually be recolored to make a convincing oil stain with some quick adjustments of hue/saturation! You can find lots of these on Deviant Art and also through Google search. While it's not for a commercial project, it's still good form to ask for the artist's permission. 99.9% of the time, they'll be more than happy to let you use their creation so long as you show them the end results. With the .pngs, you simply drag them in on a new layer, rasterize (they'll be considered Smart Objects so you can't modify them until you rasterize), and then cut and paste whatever bits you want to use all over your base texture. You can do the same stuff as above, adding texture, depth, etc. You may need to use the warp tools to "wrap" around corners, or rounded areas.

You can also just Google entire images, like "Rusty background", "Oil stains", "Wood texture" etc, etc, and then place said image on a new layer above the base texture, and blend the layers, using something like Overlay or Soft Light. Experiment with the layer blending options until the effect looks close to what you envisioned, reduce opacity as desired, and then erase the bits you don't want to use (as above).

Good luck!

Edited August 19, 2013 by horrorview
added more

[Redphoenix 1540]

If you want, I can help you with that.

Here some screenshots I made while texturing the Mi28.

Cheers.

I always make those stains with several layers. One for brown color, one for grey and one for black. Then you have to be very cautious with colors, hardness and flow of colors in photoshop. You will need some practice, but after some time it's getting fairly easy to make such things.

[odyseus 19]

If you want, I can help you with that.

Here some screenshots I made while texturing the Mi28.

Cheers.

http://abload.de/thumb/testiipdg0esrz.png

http://abload.de/thumb/testrtueb9ls8s.jpg

I always make those stains with several layers. One for brown color, one for grey and one for black. Then you have to be very cautious with colors, hardness and flow of colors in photoshop. You will need some practice, but after some time it's getting fairly easy to make such things.

Oww those textures looks good! I wish i knew how to do it or had someone helping me! Good job RedPhoenix :D