I actually told EA that, and now I don't know what is going to happen. I wish I grew up in US like lots of my classmates. My parent wouldn't even let me study art or play games when I was teen.
It's been a while since I've used Max. It sounds like you're trying to connect the rotate from the wrist to it's parent joint. I don't know how you've set up your bones, but make sure the wrist isn't a child to it. Hope that helps.
Block out meshes? If I'm correct from Google search... You mean like a little board where you 'paint' on, except he painting appears on the computer? I don't have one, and I have no money except to ask my parents.
Had the same thoughts, like building a roguelike around the nemesis system where when you died your offspring would want to seek revenge and take out the people that killed your parent, and your nemesis would also age and have children.
You would only have to do it once - just create a material with the options you want and then use that as the parent material. Then all you would need is the offset values in your child material. Do the UV offsets/rotation come through automatically in Unity?
Create a large-ish particle emitter and parent it to your camera (that way it can look like it's raining everywhere but really it's only in a distance around your camera). Set it to make particles and ensure it's in world space. Probably want to turn on stretching based on velocity.
I've heard of the redirect before and a fun repayment of stealing bandwidth. Personally, I would bring it to the attention of his boss if he works at the cafe. If he's doing it at your home, then take it to his parents (if he's still with them, which I assume he is).
Depends how you're doing it. That'd be the easy way, but depending on what Unity allows you should be able to align a joint to another joint, so any joint on the weapon could be where it's "held" - would just be like a parent constraint in Maya or Max.
I usually say something like "My god, it must absolutely suck to be fossilized and out of touch with what's current, and popular". Then absolutely slaughter their suggestion of what's cool as being completely irrelevant boring, and stupid. (Yes I've said this to my parents). :D
I'm not the most familiar with Max, but does each sub-object not get treated as a new "parent"? If so I would think leaving everything separate and only combining on export or right before baking seems better, leaving everything "live" until finalized.