During the last days I finally stepped up my foot-game (:D ...anybody?) and experimented with displacement-maps for realistic wrinkles on the soles. However, the usual methods are far too hamfisted and imprecise for my purposes, especially since you can only see the effects of displacement maps once you render the image or use the obnoxious iray-preview. Instead I used blender to turn those displacement maps into actual mesh, which I then smoothed out and tweaked until I got a satisfying result. Unfortunately, this means turning a rigged figure into a static one and also increasing the resolution to a point, where only the foot turns into an 80MB .obj file. But the results are breathtaking and the size of the wrinkles is absolutely incredible when compared to a regular human.
Go follow me on Twitter: @UnseenHarbinger! I tend to publish WIPs and other stuff there, which I don't tend to upload anywhere else (because I'm lazy).
Disclaimer: The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.