Ok I have read 4 tutorials on the subject of texturing, but when I try to do it in photoshop (like paint a texture etc) it comes out horrible. Also there are very vague descriptions of bump and specular maps which I dont know if I need, and if I do need them what I should do. I am attaching an image of the ship at hand, and also the blend file if anyone wants to show me by example. I made seams for UV mapping too, but again it wasnt much help once I got it into photoshop.
What you need is a reference for your UV-map. An export of the UV-map in vector format usually works best. As an alternative, if the map is simple, you could use a screenshot of the UV-view as reference material.
Well I pinned and unwrapped it and was able to export the UV map to png format and open it in photoshop. I guess where I am confused is: does the ships exterior use UV maps or materials to make it look metal? I use the paint texture in photoshop and it looks horrible, kinda stuck.
Another thing you can do in blender to help generate textures is use the texture baker under the uv menu in the uv window. It renders the procedural textures(includding images) onto a mesh generated form the uv coords. It isn't perfect, but it can give you a pretty good start.
