Soulburn Studios Art Lessons

Different Types Of Weathering
By Neil Blevins
Created On: May 31st 2015
Updated On: Sept 7th 2015

Weathering is the process of taking the textures on your 3d model and making them look old, like they've been sitting outside for awhile, or have undergone a lot of use. Weathering adds realism and visual interest to your models, and there's a lot of different types of weathering. First are the different materials that appear on weathered objects such as Rust, Dirt, Chipped Paint, etc. Then each of those form in different sorts of pattern, such as scratches, drips, at edges, etc. This tutorial goes about showing how I like to categorize my weathering reference. I have hundreds of photographs of weathering on my hard drive that I use for reference, and divide them into these categories so they're easy to find when I need to see weathering examples and then replicate them on my models.

Here are my categories...