Hi. I’m just wondering if anyone has any helpful tips on modelling a coin?
Basically, I have a picture of someone’s head that I want to emboss onto a coin. Would this be best achieved via modelling or texturing?
tip:
import the picture in inkscape
trace
save as SVG.
import svg file in blender.
extrude.
It depends what you want to do with the coin,
If you’re doing a close up detailed shot you’ll want to add a greyscale image texture and use ‘Noise’ or better still, use a displacement texture/modifier. The advantage is a detailed model, the disadvantage is there will be lots of geometry.
If its going to be small/viewed from a distance you can get away with using a normal map or just a shaded image of the coin. Hope that helps…
Unless you’re going for a super close up of the coin, bump or normal mapping would be the way to go. Most coins have the image stamped into the metal, so the image is beneath the edge of the coin, so it doesn’t matter if the coin edge renders smooth, since it actually is smooth (usually edges are a problem with bump maps.)
If you want to model the face, trac is giving you poor advice, since you can more easily use the picture of the coin as a background image and trace it right in blender.
Your best bet is normal mapping if you are only going to see the coin from normal angles, and displacement mapping if you plan on some extreme camera angles. The new tangent space normal mapping in the 2.43 RCs holds up to close inspection much better than the old normal mapping. There are plug-ins for both GIMP and Photoshop you can use to make the normal map from an image.
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Cool 
! Thanks LOTRJ! 