Well, if you have dirt on your stuff, adding a rough specular to whatever is shiny will help it tons. Also, like I said, it doesn’t have to be highres, if the diffuse is 512x256, you can use 256x128 or even 128x64. Of course, the lower you go the less detail you get but still, the overall impression will be there and help make it look better.
Looking forward to the images 
update…& a new room,I’ll be adding a hatch at one end that can lead to the exterior of the craft
everything in this pic is an instance of other parts of the model with the exception of the crates(yes,the obligatory crates,lol)
this room is lit by 4 lights,total polycount now after instancing is 23k…I need to get onto the exterior soon so I know whats left for the interior
*edit…floating crate has just been fixed
Man this is looking sexy! if you get it into unreal we all gotta have a death match 
I think i might give up on my level , II am realizing I am biting off more than i can chew!! but i will keep trying
keep at it Matellis,:)…tough time of year to be doing much of anything,think of it as an escape from the xmas rush
here’s a run down on the crates…first image shows just the normal mapped low poly box(looks alot better using directx for the viewport,the realtime lighting feedback is awesome)the last image is the high res model,I baked the normal maps from that to the low poly box
Stefan, your killin it! That ray tracing is cheating like ****in crazy though! I better stop staring at the monitor and do something. Did you get something squared away for a game engine? If you can export to a LWO or into Maya, there are tools that you could use to just dump all this into Unreal as static mesh. Then if it doesnt match up with the rest, you could just use a teleporter or something to mask it the best you can. If you built it in the ^2 you should be golden!
It’s at times like this I really wish that max had parallax mapping… Those crates would look killer with it. And yes, the reflections are a tad on the strong side 
Okay, I can’t resist a fanboy post any longer… It looks AMAZING!!! Great job!
There, got it out of my system. 
I am not happy, you’re on your 5th page 
that is so awesome, specially the props
I love that secret passage idea, well done 
Awesome looking screens.
Youre giving everyone a run for the money. Which is outstanding! [size=2](plan on starting mine tomorrow.)[/size]
I am really liking all the UGAC logos. Adds a nice touch
Also, I noticed that you have a secret passage. Very cool idea. I didnt even think about that.
Keep up the good work, as always I look forward to your next update.
-Daren Loney
Man, that looks sweet!
Love the lights. Normal maps look good too. The reflection on the floor could be more suttle.
Keep it up.
hey everythings looking sweet so far, only one niggle, plenty of wasted space around that crate texture, put one of the ends on the otherside, and scale up, or if you dont want to redraw, then wack another small prop, in the space left, a crow bar, or wrench or both could be slotted down the sides.
Shepeiro,good point about the left over space on the texture map,I’ll probably put some of the smaller props for the cells on it.
in a nod to shawshank redemption I’ll have a poster on one of the cell walls with a hidden tunnel.
haven’t had much time for this the last couple days ,hopefully next week there will be more updates
Cheers
Stefan
*hypnotised by Shepeiros avatar
Beautiful work so far this is looking great. Max can support parallax mapping urgaffel, check out Ben Clowards shaders on his website. In particular the offset mapping shader.
out of curiosity. how many polys is your “hi poly” crate?
looking at the transition from the hi poly version to the normal mapped, it looks inverted. was this intential. ?
the hi-poly is about 2k…so,calling it hi-poly is a bit of a stretch,but that’s what that normal map was generated from
I’m not sure if it’s inverted,I certainly agree in that pic it does look inverted but when viewing in directx mode & draging lights around it looked fine…if they are inverted,how would I go aout fixing them?..& what would cause them to be inverted in the first place?
I’ve grabbed some of the parallax shaders linked by CG_Gordon & hope to look into them some more after the weekend,also grabbed a plugin to make height map from normal maps so I can get more detail working in these crates
Cheers
happy holidays!
*edit,just got the strangest error when editing this post:
The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters
I looked into these shaders & it turns out my video card isn’t up to scratch…it only works with Radeon 9700 & higher…I’m using a Radeon 9600 
erm not sure if you have some filler edition or something but I run a 9600XT 256mb and it can handle shaders perfectly. only thing that can handle more is the newer pixelshader 3 cards but only one or two games even use shader 3 and even then it isnt much more.
