A buck twenty five

[alp]

Love the settle texture on this !

[JTrusty]

If you really wanted to make it work you can, without Mudbox or Zbrush. Be creative.

Thanks Egon for the extra push!

I spent a bit more time at it today and I think the results are much better. I eeked out every last bit I could from the anisotropic material, made some geometry changes to the base model, and heavily reworked the bump map.

[richardfunnell]

Those look great!! That extra work on the bump map really helped 

Are you familiar with CrazyBump? It's a great resource for getting more control over your maps:
http://www.crazybump.com/

[EGON]

Looks a BAZILLION times better! Actually looks interesting now. Sometimes less is more.