Why are you using DDO renderer? How do you plan to render your finished highpoly model, what software and what renderer? And use Xnormal to make curvature maps.
good reference is the first step , just look up a lot of examples of handpainted things and approaches. also determine if you want to do the from scratch approach or from a baked highpoly.
The highpoly is actually in the mid section ;) The renders are not super since they were just quick ones. Almost done with the UVs should be done wednesday since I wont have time tmr!
Have you included the floating geometry in the 'Reference Geometry' list (upper right corner of your screenshot?) both your Highpoly model and the floating geometry should be referenced, otherwise they will be ignored
@Thomas Doig - Because this challenge is a noob challenge I believe you have freedom to choose your polycount or texture size...I'm not sure :) ) HighPoly is done...Next step, Lowpoly
Could you use the highpoly to create a lowpoly eg remove all mesh smoothing and remove extra supporting loops? that might be the quickest way to get a good lowpoly of a hardsurface model.
Millenia Racer445 Two great weapon tutorials, both go from Highpoly/Lowpoly/Texture. I am really digging the look in FPS view, would be great to see this in a game.
You don't decimate the low poly mesh, you decimate the highpoly mesh so that you can export it to other applications instead of trying to load a 12million+ vertex model into Maya.
On top of what Shrike said that scope is not going to bake well at all. You are going to get all kinds of waviness and artifacts because of how different your lowpoly and highpoly are in that area.