How to get realistic textures

26979-curtain.jpg

So i was wondering what i had to do in order to make my game have realistic graphics. I use the image above as a curtain but in unity it doesn’t look quite as good. Im using an hd realistic looking texture, but it doesn’t look as good like i said. Is there a way or some sort of shader that i have to use in order to make it look right.

Normal maps are probably the best way to get what you want. Unity has a feature to convert textures to normal maps, but I don’t know how to use it. So far, I’ve used GIMP and a plugin to generate my normal maps, and it’s worked quite nicely - below, on the left I have a normal map, and on the right is the same texture without one.
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Here’s a link to help you out, ignore everything about the fine-tuning, since that’s for a specific use.