Retextured Drums

So I retextured the drums and used ZBrush to bring out a few traits such as the stiching and wood grain. Overall I liked what I did with the wood grain and stiching but my texture didn't turn out the way I wanted. I still think the first texture of the drums looks better.

Final renders of the drums only using Maya

So here are 5 pics of the drums only using Maya Rendering. I used a few directional lights, volume light and mental ray; using final gathering and global illumination.

Updates on Taiko Drums

Alright, so here is an update on what I have done so far. What you will see are the normal map, color map, ambient occlusion map, specular maps and a few pics I took from the final rendering of Maya software. For the normal map and ambient occlusion map I used ZBrush; I wanted to try something different because in Maya the process of normal mapping and ambient occlusion mapping takes forever. The color map and specular map I used Photoshop. The last two pics are the high and low models next to another. The low model on the left is 6,978 tris and the high model on the right is 171,318 tris.

Background and Enviroment Design

I am currently working on a project that consists of designing Taiko drums found in Japan. It is said the drums are able to frighten evil spirits and the sounds the drums produce are known to be the voice of Buddha. Anyway, My assignment is to model and texture these drums and to eventually create an overall environment. Here is the reference sheet I will be using. What I had in mind for this project is to create a tropical jungle; I might create small village that happens to get caught up in military affairs. Here is the work in progress thus far.