The key with scaly animals is non uniformity escpecially in the facial features. This can only be accomplished by hand painting the pattern to fit the animals face. The next is lowering the contrast of the scale lines. Most scaled animals are the same color, there is no befining color seperating the scales so the seperation lines should be nearly the same color as the scales. Actulally, for the best effect the color map should only contain the various color subtleties. The scale pattern should be drawn and applied as a bump map. This would most closely replicate the true testure of the critter. Lots of work? sure! but the effects are worth it. Combine with a accurate specularity map and Wham you have a killer surface. aif you extracted the crosshatch pattern from your texture, and left the dragon with just you color scheme, then applied the crosshatch as a bump map you will see much more realistic results. Also you need to vary the scale frequency, size and shape over different parts of the bidy. This is critical especially on the head,