In Johny's post, Art and Shit Dump, he has some hand guns that have very nice details on them, particularly on the sides. Later down the post, someone asks how he did that and Vig says he probably did it with Zbrush. Now I don't know Zbrush at the moment, is there a way to do it through Photoshop alone?

here

You can try to mimic bevels with photoshop and even the cylindrical smoothness, but the results wouldn't be very good close up.

Not sure his process, but Zbrush wouldn't be necessary for what he did, just high poly modeling and photoshop. All the decrotive detail on the pistol and texture stuff is done in photoshop and the overall form of the normal map done in any modeling package.

Photoshop + crazybump

hard-core hipoly modeling [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

How I'd do it: High poly modeling with insane accurate reference...crazybump or other apps to bring out the detailed depth or with photoshop.

Photoshop a displacement and crazybump or render a mesh with displacement map and get your normal from that?

I think it is pointless to sculpt in that detail, no idea if that is what Johnny did or not... either just photoshop it, or use a spline projection/extrusion or displacement map.