I’m planning a live action short film that would include dinosaurs, so I tried testing my current texturing skills to decide if it’s too ambitious a project for me at this point. The model is nowhere near finished or properly photorealistic, but this gave me some confidence and faith that I probably can learn the skills required for the project. I only spent about two evenings for this, so I know I can do even better if I really try.
I started with my low/midpoly iguanodon model as a base. First I sculpted some details with multires and then did some texturing with a snake skin texture. I used two image textures and their RGB channels to mix 7 differently scaled (haha, scaled… ) versions of the texture together. In the end I used that texturing for roughness, bump/displacement and normals, and painted the actual color texture with stencil brush in texture paint workspace (I used a picture of pears as the stencil ). Then I used the roughness map to add dark parts between the scales. Rendered in Eevee, 4.2.2.
At some point when doing some earlier tests with the old stegosaur texture I accidentally used wrong uv map, so the dino ended up looking like a baby dinosaur in pyjamas:
I think the current prevailing theory is that the most birdlike of the dinosaurs likely had feathers, which may or may not have also included the T-Rex.
It’s actually quite hard to depict dinosaurs in way that would age perfectly well, because all the time there are new discoveries and theories. Some dinos that got mummified before fossilization maybe the only exception. However, the film will anyway be a half fantasy world with also some invented and fictious breeds, so I can design them however I feel like.
Instead of improving my Blender skills, I’m now coming up with tons of puns about the word “feather” Maybe I should do fan art about the anime movie “Feathering With You”. So that the characters are birds of a feather. Feather or not it’s a good idea. Because I’m still not yet a featheran with Blender. I’d feather go to sleep now.
) versions of the texture together. In the end I used that texturing for roughness, bump/displacement and normals, and painted the actual color texture with stencil brush in texture paint workspace (I used a picture of pears as the stencil 
). Then I used the roughness map to add dark parts between the scales. Rendered in Eevee, 4.2.2.
I added a note that I started with the previous low/mid poly model, so not done completely from scratch. 
However, the film will anyway be a half fantasy world with also some invented and fictious breeds, so I can design them however I feel like.