Cloth modifier is perfect for this. You can take it into zbrush to do some finetuning but i wouldn't bother doing the whole thing in zbrush. It's much easier and faster with cloth modifier.
changing all the smoothing groups to '1' basically should reset them. But you can also use the edit normal modifier (see below) try the edit normals modifier
Necro bump. Just went back and updated this script so it'd work correctly with newer versions of maya: //RepeatLast Hotkeyer v2if (`window -exists rlHotkey`) deleteUI rlHotkey;window -wh 250 50 -mxb 0 -title "RepeatLast Hotkeyer" rlHotkey;frameLayout -bs "etchedOut" -w 200 -cll 0 -l "Enter Hotkey";formLayout selForm;…
Splinter Cell: Conviction uses a modified version of the Unreal 2 engine, apparently it's been modified enough that they refer to it as the LEAD Engine at Ubisoft.
I would select my verts I wanted to form the circle and apply a spherify modifier, then just collapse the stack if your one of those people who hate stacking modifier's.
Select your LP meshes together, apply a edit poly modifier, to the selection, adjust your uvw so no over lapping, bake, then delete the edit poly modifier off the stake.