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Does anyone know how to paint tau to look realistic?

How would I paint them to look like the battlesuits were thoroughly battered, not just the regular off the line looking orange ones?

Sounds like you want to try weathering techniques. There are loads of tutorials on these boards and YouTube for a range of different possibilities.

Realistically we would have no idea what tau would look like since they are fish people from space that we have had no contact with

But yeah sounds like you want to make it more realistic.

For Tau being sort of pragmatic
Paint there armor in camo or solids similar to what kind table or base you are using.

Stay away from insane bright colors.

Use super bright silvers or Vallejo air Aluminum on scratch to show futuristic space metals.

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You can actually get a rather nice effect doing bright, sci-fi style armour then hitting it with a few weathering techniques. It's not a Tau, but this guy illustrates the techniques/effects you can get and how they look on something with a similarly clean and flat design:



This was painted in a clean-lined, bright and high contrast scheme like you often see on Tau suits, before I applaud some simple sponge weathering and gave it much more gritty, realistic look.

Sponge weathering is simple. Take a piece of sponge or scouring pad, and dip it into a small amount of the colour you want to do chips in, then wipe away most of the paint as you would with a drybrush, before dabbing it onto the areas you want damage. You'll get a variety of sizes/shapes so the damage looks natural, and often smaller/more realistic chips than you would painting one at a time.

Beyond that, any other weathering technique will work just as well on Tau as anything else so look up weathering powders, chipping, sculpting damage and that sort of thing.

Hope that's of some use!

Great plog of very battle hardened Tau troops

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?375459-Tau-Drop-Troops