Lol, it’s ok, I think I am in over my head, too. Your answers were actually perfect, and led me to where I needed. Thank you so much for indulging me, even though I’m pretty sure I sounded stupid.
I have decided to simply live on Blender until it’s done, and turn it in late if necessary.
After furiously watching tutorial videos and researching procedures, I have figured a few things out. I’ll put them here in case it helps someone else…
A) Yes, the leather image is meant to be a repeating pattern, I now see how you set the resolution as soon as you open a new image, and 4096 is a common resolution for this kind of thing, it seems. Also, I’m glad to know I don’t have to worry about the OGL spec.
B) The high-poly bake, I’m thinking that they want to see whether I can do the whole variety of maps and baking.
I plan now to do the sculpting of little wrinkles/seams/distortion in the ottoman on a second model, and bake it into a normal map this way:
Then I will add the material, make all the necessary maps, and bake it all together, as shown in the links on this ba thread:
Looks easy enough, right?
C) As far as the Metalness vs Specular, I’m thinking it makes more sense that they are mentioning all the possibilities that they will accept, and expect me to use the ones that I think will get the job done, especially since everyone is using the Principled Shader now. Since your reaction was that it seemed odd to use every one of them, I think I’ll go with that.
Thank you again