Hi,
I was wondering if anyone here has any bright ideas
on how to make Weld Lines? Anything will work but
weld lines on tube joints would be awesome.
Thank you for reading this and happy modeling.
how about using texture paint to paint a grayscale normals map for it. with the improved normals mapping it should look pretty good.
I agree with Modron. Normal maps seems to be the way to go for this.
I think I saw Kernon Dillon use curves and a bit of sculpting for weld joints in his staircase tutorial, but it’s been a while. Like forming a circle/torus and wrapping it around the objects to be welded and deforming it a bit to get the right look.
How about using texture paint to paint a grayscale normals map for it. with the improved normals mapping it should look pretty good.
Hi,
I don’t understand what you’re saying thus I wouldn’t
even know how to do that.
I do have those tutorials so I’ll watch them as soon as possible.
I’m still open to any ideas or suggestions anyone has.
Another method would be to put random vertices or faces using retopology tool, and then parent a meta shape to that, mesh’s vertices or faces. This is a dirty and quick example I did, and its already poly heavy, so maybe you could you could use this to form your normal maps.
Will need some polishing to get the right look, of course.
Here is a link to avideo tutorial for normal maps in 2.5x
Note that you will have to have a more detailed model to start from. But once you do, this info may help you on down the road. Either way, at least you’ll know a little more about normal maps! 
By the way, the video doesn’t explain it, but a normal map “fakes” bumps and geometry, it does not actually deform the surface of the mesh.
It looks like you could just sculpt the weld marks by hand. I think just a simple sculpt brush stroke would match pretty well. If you wanted you could use a textured brush. Then either leave it if you don’t mind high-poly count or use it to create a bump map to add back on to the original mesh as a texture as suggested above.
Did you sculpt the original pipe mesh or did you use a separate mesh?
In that example the weld is a seperate mesh (but same object) but you could just as easily sculpt directly onto the pipes.
Those look pretty good. Time to go watch me some blender tutorials.