Renaissance Medal

[james-thompson--2]

I built a base mesh (as always) in Maya using SubDs..

There's still a fair bit to do, like his elaborate crown/tiara (he's the last emperor of Byzantium) and the raised Greek lettering on the coin.
I've made several attempts in Maya to do this project over the last few years and failed miserably. This time it worked the way I wanted it to. It was really difficult to figure out the way to do bas reliefs like this in a 3d program. At least it was for me.

15.6 million polygons.

[james-thompson--2]

This will give you an idea of just how small a range of action you get...

[james-thompson--2]

So this is pretty much complete in Mudbox. Now I've got to figure out how to get the UV mesh and create a Normal Map of it..

[chamber440]

wouldnt it be easier to use a displacement map?
you could get some nice results with that... but from a modeling perspective, nice work!