As some of you already knows, I'm a very enthusiast user of 3DC and I can say that for about 400 USD you can get an amazing and super powerful
companion for Moi :)
here is a quick test i was talking about; i used parts of your photos and created a displacement map from them and then used them as alphas in ZBrush. So in case you have already purchased ZBrush, this might give you an idea of how to create quickly simple mesh forms which can be further processed. With 3DCoat, for example, you can also import your color photos and then make planar color meshes* out of it.
