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Some people seem to think that shaders make a model look good, but infact it's the textures for 90+ % that makes it look good. Shaders can only make it a bit better, or way way worse

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This statement doesnt make sense, because normal mapping is modeling and textureing combined. You start with a high poly model and and use that for the normal map. Textures are basically a hack to take the place of model detail.. normal mapping helps close the gap. MOst games now use color textures mostly for colors and some "texturery" details.. the real 3D detail is all in the normal map which is mostly modelled, not painted.

Look at the color skins for Doom3, they are pretty flat..

Normal mapped models do not always look like plastic. If you ever created your own normal mapped models then you will know that you can control the metallic / plastic look with the specularity map. If there is no specularity then it would even look very dull and not plastic.

When you look into the latest showcase shots of my textures then you will see some parts that have more specularity than other parts. If you use that wisely then you can have a quite realistic look. And there is no shader to blame.

And Matt's statement with the flat color maps is right. You have to create them flat otherwise it will look wrong in the engine. You cannot paint a shadow in the color map and after that the real-time shadow will add to that. Often they can look contrary to each other.

Color maps should have only: colors. Lighting and highlights will come through normal and specularity maps. That is what 3d artists did in still render images for several years. And now it comes in real-time.

Shaders are a programmers attempt to kill the texture artist. "Bahhh, no more detail, keep it bland, the code will do the lighting! Let displacement mapping do the 3d work; wheres my procedural textures?! Grrr..." Conspiracy I tell ya.

The problem is you have to create a second model that is much more detailed for the normal map. This takes longer then creating a detailed 2d texture. But, as programs advance further, perhaps this wont be such a big deal. I've no problem with the look of static lightmaps, and perfer them in many situations. Half-Life2 looked better and more realistic than Quake4, although Quake4 felt stylized, which is nice. Perhaps one day when you can have the texture resolutions found in Half-life2, combined with per-pixel lighting found in Quake4, things will look very realistic. Ever notice how low-res everything is in a game that went for the realstic feel(Oblivion), now imagine this same with very high resolutions, the plastic effect should be gone.

Okey, I may have exagerated a bit indeed, colors need to be quite flat, but then again, why are there doom3 mods out there able to minimize the plastic look? I've seen their skin textures (infact I've worked on some of them some time ago (search for the 'Doom can do it too' threads) and specular maps too, it doesn't quite look the same.

Again, i'm not dissing the Doom3 engine here. The per-pixel bumpmaps, diffuse, specular, and light-filter cubemaps and stencil shadows volumes for all lights are pretty impressive.

Cheers