Greetings!
Today I want to show why everyone should take lessons of old school (game) modeling and texturing.
First of all, those times everything was made with heart, every detail of object was well known by author. Today most models are made through author's experience and not by learning object itself as it was back then.
And another thing, today less attention gives to textures than needed.
For example, today less attention gives to fake shadows(Fake Illumination Occlusion; Illusive Illumination Occlusion) than it was ten or even five years ago; And also dramatic attention giving to normal maps. And everything this gives us dramatic result, because(and because of) modelers are making models so, that normal map's illusion of displacement shouldn't be required, however to take same result required (very) high poly subdivided models, and today technology can't afford up to 10 times better performance for basic user and gamer; however modelers are making mid. poly models and not looking normal maps as they should do.
I tried my best with some models, for example this Hesco thing:
Hesco thing for Hypovolemia mod
And another example of my texture for model Barrel:
Diffuse and Normal maps
As you see I've massively used normal map and fake occlusion on diffuse map. And that gives result, really good result. Most basic lightings won't give you good result, and most (gaming) software and hardware can't produce realistic illumination occlusion, so this is still required.
You may notice, what normal map has displacement there, where it's absolutely unnecessary, but it gives much better and controllable smoothing.
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And, bye bye now
Yours, with pleasure G. Janiashvili