Cool, had no idea about things like Spyder4Pro. As far as budget, looking to keep it under $300. I don't need top of the line, just something reliable.
Oh when I tried to bake the heightmap in tiff format rather than tga in the high precision format (32F) it worked! Thank you very much for that advice!
finished up the handle and did the low poly,Lod0 should be under 500 tris so it's fine,but lod1 under 300...and that's it's just impossible to do I think :(
Maybe try these, they're for 3.0-3.1 but should give a good overview: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=53087 If yo have an specific questions feel free to ask.