Complex Materials - conclusion.

I have only scratch the surfase on modeling and textures.


First of all is preparation of the model.

• Reduce unnesasery polygons
• Attach your objects smartly.Unexperienced I did not now if I should attach, boolean or group my objects. This created additional work for me as I had to  select individual parts and apply the uvw unwrap repetedly.
• Badly made objects will produce bad effects. The dreadnaughts mangled arm was made with a series of modifiers noice wave. In the future I would not create it this way because it produced bad results even with the viewport canvas.

Selecting your method.
I have learned 3 methods to create materials:

•  the uv editor
• Multy Sub object material
• Viewport canvas
 

My favorite for its capabilities is viewport canvas, but I will be using Multy sub object also for its ease of use and siplicity and you can always use UVW map with a material bitmap. And of cource you can use more thna one method per character. I have had a tacle and a stragle with the materials of the dreadnaught but learned so much out of it. 

When I worked with the necron models I learned how to create materials within the material editor and how one material may containg another material and that another. The rusty Chain with bump within bump and the smoke from the exaust which for opacity had a gradient that ended with a smoke effect.