Here is my WIP on the AK-47
i’m trying to make it a little bit battleworn, so i’m wresteling with the texturing and materials 
Right now i think it’s a little bit too much battleworn, especially on the “magazine”. but not quite sure…
critics would help! ^^
little less dramatic “magazine”
Maybe you should consider how it got worn like that, and reduce the amount by using a black and white mask. You can already tell that it is a bit too much, but you have to think ‘how did it get this way’ and paint in the places of wear based on this. I would think that the wear would be very subtle, and not as widespread as this, otherwise I would worry that the gun would not function at all.
Thanks for the hint!
i finally found a way to create a mask for the displacement node
so here is my current result! (i kept the magazine pretty worn-out since i guess it’s one of those pieces that you scrape against a wall or ground/rocks when you find cover 
okay, but the metal scraping would be a different material, not dark black, right? I mean that the metal is painted black, but under neath it is more like steel, even if it is not shiny.
Yea i know, you’re absolutely right!
but i was still wresteling with the node noodles to get me a nice shader that could do this…
finally figured it all out and i came up with these two:
Figured out the colouring and fixed the mask (it was increasing the depth of the disp. but increasing the size of the masked places… :P)
added some more randomness to the worn-out spots and made them less “painted on spots”
Looking much better already, nice color change there for the metal underneath
Looking great, the only thing that doesn’t look to accurate is the magazine, it just looks like a cube that has been modeled on a curve
Omg, you’re right! i completely forgot to model in the bumps and ridges on it because i was so busy with the nodes! 
thanks! 
I am not sure what level of realism you are shooting for with this but generally speaking the steel/aluminum parts of firearms are not painted and so would not peal up or flake off. In the case of the AK, the steel parts are usually coated using a chemical compound called manganese phosphate. It produces a flat grayish black finish that will scratch and scuff and in areas of high wear will fade through to bare metal. (magazines are generally blued steel or bakelite)
Hope this was helpful.
your welcome, just wanted to make sure that you knew 
@Anthony: i kinda just modeled off of some reference photo’s, so in terms of colors and damage coloring, i didn’t really get a good look on it… but when i look at the reference pictures, i don’t really see any difference in the magazine color.
(so basically, you’re saying that i should go back to having the cracks/scuffs in blakc?)
modeled in some form into the magazine:
EDIT: i also adjusted the colors a bit
Not going back to black on black but rather find a different grunge map to use.
This one looks like someone used cheap rattle can paint and it is flaking off.
Check this out, see how it is faded and worn but no hard edges?
See how it sort of fades from the black finish to raw steel?
i see! that’s a nice reference pic! 
can’t say i’ll do some changes today, but i’ll try ^^
if not, i’ll make them tomorrow!
along with some more detailed modeling i hope
This is start to look good! Make sure to “age” the wooden parts too.
looking really good
@Anthony: Haha, pretty funny that we’re both working on an AK-47 at the same time
i think i will redo some of the topology on mine before i go ahead and retexturize it
your topic will help a lot for reference! thanks!
@IconW & Jacob Morris: Thanks! and i’ll do that ^^
in the first one i removed the disp. modifier so that it looks less “chipped” but i think it’s still too random and needs more fade in + out…
Added some damage to the wood on this one. (displacement on metal is back here too)
You might try to just set up Dirty Vertex Paint as a mask for hte wear, I think it might be more realistic than the chipped paint look. Also, you can just use a slight bump to the normal instead of the displace modifier, it is easier to control.
sorry for the dumb question but… what exactly do you mean with dirty vertex paint?
just paint the vertices that i want to be dirty/worn down using vertex paint? (coz i did something similar but with texture painting)
maybe i should try using the normal map yea… would make it a lot easier indeed i guess
IN Vertex Paint Mode, you can see that the model is all white - on the header choose Paint > Dirty Vertex Colors, and then make adjustments to taste. You can use the black and white vertex color map as a stencil in your materials, how is depending on if you are using Cycles or Blender Internal. I have a video on the subject in my signature on my youtube channel.
