So this is my first speed texture challenge as i just stumbled upon this forum not long ago. I have to say that everyone here has crazy skills and the tutorials i have found here are incredibly useful so far. A big thank you to everyone who posts in that section!!
As far as my workflow goes... I just learned (from this site) how to do AO maps, and i have to say it helped me out ALOT... i had never even knew how to do that in Max before this, and that was my first step. I used that as a guide, along with the UV map, to paint the diffuse using textures from cgtextures.com and a couple reference images i had in my library of rusted metal. After i got something that i was pleased with for diffuse, i duplicated and desaturated everything and tweaked the levels for my spec map, and once more for normal map setup and then used the nvidia plugin... im really not happy with the normal map, i cant seem to get the rivets to bump out the way i want them too...
i did alot of experimenting with different materials but once i decided on a palette, the whole thing took about an hour and 15 minutes give or take in photoshop, about 10 minutes of fooling with the view and setting up the light tracer for the last render...
here are the texture maps:
sheets
(edited - thank you Tats....)
sg...