You can also join the hard surface challenge for more learning! or the modeling dem hard surfaces sticky at the top! I notice that there is still surface pinching on the right side one (Though it might not be notable). Intelligent breaking down of those edges can also help...
Maya's project curve only works on Nurbs surfaces. So you could project the curve onto a Nurbs surface and then convert to polygons, but that is kind of an annoying workflow. Your other option is to make your mesh "live," and then any curve you draw will be snapped to the polygon surface.
My implementation does not involve ray-tracing, as such it can run on DX9 fine. It is designed as a fresnel reflection, which means it only effects surfaces at more perpendicular angles to the camera normal. It looks awesome on curved and complex surfaces, but the effect is less convincing on large, flat surfaces.
I prefer Blender too but you can also check out Modo Indie. It's meant for modeling subdivision surfaces instead of nurbs, but subdivision surfaces are quicker and easier to model than nurbs anyway. (Blender also has much better tools for modeling subdivision surfaces.)
They're all individually and together a texture. A texture is just surface detail, normals, AO, and diffuse all provide surface detail. When combined you get a complete surface detail. Originally, diffuse was the only form of applying texture, by changing the color of the pixels of the rendered polygons.
I'm trying to learn hard-surface modeling in max with Turbosmooth. My question is pretty much what the image says. Is there a better way to do this so that it doesn't pinch that way around the outside?