I've been inspired by some of the CGI artists here who uses different render passes to extract several levels of detail. I wanted to test this myself, so I modeled up the iron man helmet to experiment with it (model still not entirely finished).
I might have gone a bit overboard with the layers, so feedback is appreciated! Also, let me know someone has some learning resources on how to utilize different render passes in photoshop. Still a difficult software to master i think.
Modeled in NX, rendered in KS4.
Some progress.