So, while painting in Photoshop is all fun and games, the goal was somehow to get back on track with 3d after a long break. So without further ado I present the first almost-finished prop!

A glorious shipping crate (excuse the shoddy render and uncorrected verticals)!

It’s a relatively simple basemesh with some fancy shaderwork.
I’m using a layered approach to shading this with basecolor, decals and grunge-layers. I’m then blending in a rust-shader with the help of an ambient occlusion map that is modulated with a texture.
The edges are chamfered with a shader as well so I don’t have to have that type of detail. I’m guessing my computer would choke with the roughly 1000 crates that’s in the scene otherwise!

The image above has pretty much all layers on. There will be cleaner crates and even rustier ones.