I have been using shaders to get the basic colour and as you can see it all looks a bit clean. I need to dirty it up a bit, a few mud splats and dirty wheels. Also the barrel needs to look used. Would it be best to use shaders to get the dirty finish or texture maps, or a combination of both?

Also any thoughts or comments on the modeling would be appreciated.
cheers

Steve

 Wonderful. Can't tell much about the modeling from the image since it's small, but from what I can see, you've been paying nice attention to detail. 

Mark

Looking very cool. For the texture use image map, I think its better to create dirty and things like that.

Here is a bigger pic with no texture. I've tried to be as accurate as i can using various references. 
Next will be the horse team to pull it!!  maybe!
 cheers
Steve

Fantastic model there Steve. You are like me and love to get the detail right.
Image maps are a good idea though I also tend to mix those along with procedurals also using several plugins from "Digital Carvers Guild" such as "Anything Goos" and "EnhanceC" etc and then bake the produrals to create the remaining image maps.

BTW.. Was the model built within Carrara or did you use an external modeller?

 The modeling looks great. 

Texturing: You can get absolute precision with texture maps and, as a rule, texture maps render faster if appropriately scaled. However, Carrara does have an excellent procedural shading capability. So, blending two texture maps or a texture map an a procedural map with something like Digital Carvers Guild Anything Goos is also an excellent option. For the wooden portions, a texture map might be the best choice but I'd try the wood procedurals first before investing the time in a texture map. For the metal, blended procedurals are the best route to take - in my opinion...   :D

Excellent looking model! I wish I had the real thing for our next block party.

I'm so happy seeing works done in Carrara like this.  Your work really shows off what Carrara can do.  Outstanding job!  Jan

And yes it was all modeled in Carrara 7pro.

cheers
Steve

Looks great!

You should get that Baker plugin. (If you don't have it already.) UV map your model as you normally would. But instead of painting a texture from the start, use procedurals to start out with to get a nice base for your texture. Then bake those to make your initial texture map based on your UV templates. Then paint on that to grunge it up and add wear marks, etc.

That way you save a bit of work when starting and still get the best of both worlds. :)

 Thanks guys for the help.
Would these ways you've described give me (if i wanted) thick clumps of mud hanging off ? or would i have to do something different to get that effect?

cheers

 I'd be tempted to use some low resolution poly models with smoothing turned on and possible add a displacement channel to the shader. 

For long shots, displacement would be over kill though. Either a Normals map or simple bump would be ok. 

 Thanks Mark. I don't know if I want to go that dirty, but I now know if i do. cheers.

Looks great to me.  I hate texturing and feel your pain.