I'd really recommend bumping the barrel up to 8-sided from its current 6; the extra 6 triangles will really improve the 'roundness' of the barrel at a very small cost.
I use Max 6 because the tools for my current expansion pack project are written for Max 6 and the tool programmers have moved onto support other projects.
10 Votes: Zilean from LOL 6 Votes: French Resistance Lady 6 Votes: Chakram Assassin 6 Votes: Warrior Monk- Dark Soul 2 looking thing. Ps. I will pick only 2 pieces for us to work on for September. Voting ends on the 28th. If there are some ties, it will extend till the 29th.
I might be misunderstanding. But originally you have the environment you are trying to capture in Maya. You render from 6 cameras. Convert to cubemap format. Then try to convert back to use as a skybox? Can't you just use your 6 original images and map them to 6 planes (a cube)? Skipping all the CubeMapGen and HDRShop?