I just watched some tutorials, practiced 3 times and I'm tired so I'm resorting to help.
Baking maps in 3DS Max, I followed the procedure. No overlapping UV's, the UV channel is correct, there's a high poly and a low poly mesh, low poly mesh is selected. I created a cage and have gave it a lot of room to project. Skylight is turned on. I'm shooting a ton of rays (500) with lots of padding (5).
Yet, I'm getting this.
![iFBUPHr4EtJ3p.png](http://i.minus.com/iFBUPHr4EtJ3p.png)
Here are the bakes
![iUsyGV7EQpUfi.png](http://i.minus.com/iUsyGV7EQpUfi.png)
![iZGCY7PrMQjm2.png](http://i.minus.com/iZGCY7PrMQjm2.png)
The mesh in question (cage)
![iCp0S6B9pS9VK.png](http://i.minus.com/iCp0S6B9pS9VK.png)
Wireframe of the mesh (the hi-poly is blue)
![ibkrJVlDJmmeUn.png](http://i.minus.com/ibkrJVlDJmmeUn.png)
Replies
The normal map won't show in the render unless you're using a Normal Bump map type, and make sure to set the Bump Channel strength to 100 (default is 30 in a Standard material).
Are you using a different Smoothing Group per UV element? For a cube with those UVs you really only need 3 SGs, but that's not really necessary.
Here's what I got now: