I have thought and it would be good for me to explain a couple of things about my project. It is all modeled in Maya, as I am much more comfortable with it and see no reason to change. But I render in 3DS Max and use V-Ray. I gain two advantages I really enjoy for them. The first one is a real benefit I have found. In Max 2009 their Mental Ray has a Composite Node that gives you many of the Photoshop abilities. You can layer just as in Photoshop and have the blend abilities. Here is a screen shot of one of the materials I used on the Deck plating. I am sure someone will know of how I can do it in Maya, but learned of it while using Max. And as you can see it is plugged into a VRayDirt node. In the VrayDirt I have alot of parameters I can work with that I find alittle more difficult, meaning how and where to change something, in other occlude materials. I plugged the composite node into the Unoccluded color and black will be the occluded color. Layer 1 in the composite is the color. Layer 2 is the texture you see on the plate that is the dirt, or what I call it. Layer 3 is a alpha I make in Photoshop and do a brush stroke around the edges of the plating. I save it at 80% fill opacity, and in the Composite I lower the overall opacity to 30%. And layer 4 it the same, except in my UV's I had made an edge where the plates overlap and I do a brush stroke there also.

Well, I am sure that is more than you may have wanted to know, sorry!! But I like doing everything in my render, and as little as I have to in post. This help me do that!

OK, back to work Tom!! ;-)