@Havok: Those are high compliments man, thanks. I can't tell you how good it feels to inspire other artists.
@Jon: Definately use seperate layers and when they start piling up, group them! Never burn or dodge directly to your image because once you burn to black or dodge to white, the color info in those pixels are gone forever.
Quote: "by the way, can i ask, with all that commercial work, what made you come to FPSC?"
Unemployment. The indy dev. I'd been working for closed up and I've been avoiding joining a sweatshop. I'm using FPSC to suppliment my reel... in-game type stuff is much more appealing than rendered models. Most of my real-time stuff is enviroments and I hate modeling static enviroments. As a bonus, since I'm ronin for the time being, I can make art independently without worrying about someone else claiming ownership of it.
@Rebellious: A little of all of the above. I've attached a comp with some of the issues including the mip-map problem that's driving me nuts. I'm using FPSC V1, btw. Also, I'm not sure that it's even referencing the _D2 map. They're looking OK-ish as long as you're moving around but every so often it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
@Smitho: That's TBD. I'm out of real-estate on that rifle map. I need to see if I can get additional textures working.