Maya Ornament modeling

KUBZ

Hi everybody,

first of all sorry for any english mistakes, I'm from germany oh and my double v key is missing.

I anted to model a complete room ith barock furniture for my bachelors.

This is my reference picture:



So there is also going to be a bed, chair, nightstand etc. that are in the same style (so I could reuse some of the ornaments on the other furniture, that would save a lot of modeling time)

My question is:

what is the best way to achieve the exact model, with not too much polycount. (as I mentioned, there are several furniture in my scene that have the same style.)

should I get a base done in maya and then model the ornaments on top of it in zbrush. and after that get the normal map out of it ? how can I texture it afterwards? when I would bring the normal map back to maya, I wont see the details ontop of my model right? It will only show the base mesh but when I render it with vray or mental ray I can see the details on it?

Hope somebody can help me

I'm just looking for a good way to model this.

Fast
good polycount (so maya won't crash)
and uncomplicated

Thanks