If I see an existing model by someone else (image 1 below), it almost seems like someone pushed a thin cylinder around the side. I could add one such contour with a boolean operator, but I have no idea how I could make the same contour around the side equally distributed. Is this the way to create a coin? Or is there a better way?
image1
image2
I recommend doing coin details with a displacement texture
Hi there,
Another solution may be masking it out, and use wave textures, or maybe a brick?
Then you can use bump.
Of course modeling is the sharpest way, it all depends on how simple you want it to be 
Something like this ?:
And the blend file:
coin.blend (98.8 KB)
Okay okay it’s more like a bootle cap…
I am guessing that is a parallax shader. Like a normals map on steroids.
https://www.alanzucconi.com/2019/01/01/parallax-shader/parallax_02/
Not quite, “parallax” is an effect where different layers of a flat 2D image are perceived as having depth.
https://www.artstation.com/blogs/loftus/9B67/parallax-mapping-in-blender-part-1
3000X3000 texture containing multiple camera angles, and I am going to make some so that I can have depth in my skyscrapers/shop windows without crashing my scene!
Of course, it depends on your final application and use of the asset, but instead of modeling it, I would recommend sculpting such details and ultimately baking them to a normal map.
Would you mind add some explanation for the steps you did? I opened the file and I see mirror/array/subdivisions are applied, but I don’t understand how you could create this shape.
(Not applied, only added 
)
Add a cylinder (here 64 vertices), select the edge and bevel, select two segments, delete the rest, model some “wrinkles”, add an empty rotate 360/64*2 (or so) in Z-axis, add an array, object offset…bla bla… oh and i cut it in half (–> mirror)
(This sounds like a tutorial of Ian Hubert…)
