hi guys… i’m just a little noobie, and i’m modeling one character from Marvel, and i have one answer…
i’m modeling her leather jaquet, and i wanna do some details just like these:
(images from Gnomon lecture dvd website)
and the answer is:
what brush i use to do this correctly?
and ok… supose i can do this…
to back to Max, having this details on mesh(without normalmap), i’ll have to retopologyse poly-by-poly? 
im sure a lot of folks would say to do it in zbrush but typically if ind its hard to get the resolution that i want .me personally i prefer to do fine detail work like that in maya or max useing subdivision surfaces that give me the crisp edge i want and need. then bring it back into zbrush for fine detail work
you could do it in zbrush if your model is high res enough. however in the making of that particular model he models most of the details like that actually in maya into the topology, he really only used zbrush for small fine tuning.
In ZBrush, check out the Slash and Slash2 brushes. 