I'm just curious as to how people make their textures for more advanced models such as armors or other meshes that have detail on them. Does everybody hand paint them?

Just fishing around for ideas, as I finally have the ability to make armor and yet I'm incapable of making the textures id like to make.

Mostly, no, I don't do hand painted (currently trying my hand at hand painting a mushroom and it looks pretty crappy I don't have a tablet for one thing, and for the other, I doubt I'd be that good with one anyway. I start with a base texture and then use lots of layers and a little hand painting.

That's what I've been doing but it always seems to look completely horrible. Do you export your UV Maps and slice it up somehow?