Student needs help creating higher detail

[TravelingBard]

I’m a student at Full Sail in the Online Game Art program, and just got to the point of adding higher detail to models with zBrush and baking Normal maps in Maya. I feel pretty comfortable in Maya now and have used zBrush for detailing with alpha’s and polypaint, but I’m having trouble figuring out how to do more detailed modeling (our lectures are a bit light on actual teaching, and we’re provided a few several hour playlists with the actual info we need. Each playlist has it’s own info that’s important, but also shares about 75% of the same content as the others too, so going through them can be quite daunting).

For my assignment due this weekend I’m interested in modeling this shield:

I can fairly easily model the wolf sigil into the shield, or even just create an alpha for it, but I’m not sure about the remaining detail around the outside edge of the shield. It looks like small chain link kind of detail, but isn’t entirely clear. It’s this kind of detail I get lost on. I could work some photoshop magic and create an alpha for it, but preliminary testing on this didn’t yield the best results. This definitely doesn’t seem like something you’d do in Maya (I mean I could, but this kind of detail would probably take longer in Maya than the rest of the models I also need to make combined. At least with how I’d try to do it). Otherwise I could just experiment with some brushes in zBrush to sculpt it in, but I’m not sure of the best way to do stuff like this. I was wondering what you guys would suggest to do something like this before I just start sculpting away at my base mesh and guessing. I also have two other models to do with about the same level of detail, so figuring out how to do this so I can practice it would be really helpful.

*Don’t get me wrong, experimentation is half the process and fun of modeling, but I also work full time in IT on top of my class work, and the workload with Full Sail can take up to 30-40 hours a week sometimes. So getting some direction and an idea of what to do would be really helpful, and hopefully allow me some time to sleep this week lol.

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EDIT: You know what? I just realised you posted this two weeks ago and that the deadline has already passed haha. Well I hope it might help you in the future anyways. I’d like to hear what solution you came up with.

There’s a few ways you could do this.

You could do it directly in Zbrush, but I haven’t really tried this before so I could be totally wrong (feel free to do some digging on it though, or maybe someone will come along and explain a better method than I). But you can have radial axis in zbrush, and you could basically make one section of that fine detail as an insertmesh, and it should be repeatable it around the model. This saves time, and it also means you don’t have to subdivide the model crazy high.

Radial symmetry down the bottom: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/sculpting/symmetry/

Insert mesh: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/sculpting/sculpting-brushes/insert-mesh/

You could also do that kind of detail in a program like Substance Painter so you don’t have to model it in. Or, you could convert that image into a normal map and overlay it onto the normal map you’ve baked from your Zbrush model, that way you get higher detail but it probably wouldn’t turn out as nicely. It’d look a bit crummy.

Let me know how it goes!