Wow, u must have posted right after me Gephoria - the darker part u mention is another smoothing group issue, i think i posted the engine version as opposed to my max version which has different smoothing groups, though i kinda like the effect, like that part hasnt had much sunlight or something lol. Oh and i gotta be carefull with how much individuality i add to the surfaces as im having to mirror uvs and also instance alot of geometry - so dont want to give that away. I like the wear and tear though so will keep adding it where i can :-)
Anyways, ive just tweaked the original map i generated the normals from (thanks James) and fiddled with some settings in crazybump also, its looking much nicer now and would just like to thank TheCorey, he pointed out it looked like there was too much big detail, i was sure the slider was down to 0 but i guess it wasn't on the originals as when i tweaked it i got the effect i wanted! So thanks again!
Its funny how easy it is to miss little things like that, always good to double check, heres some comparison renders:
the bottom render has sharper corners to the bricks and less "clay" effect i think, though the bricks feel a little "scratchy" i dunno how to explain it, im thinking maybe i tweaked the source image and made that too sharp, never the less what do u guys think now?
Oh PS here's the next level i knocked up, smoothing groups will be sorted:
