FX shaders don't work with offline renderers (any of the stuff in the Rendering menu). If you want to "render" the viewport out to a file, open the Tools menu and choose one of the Grab Viewport methods. http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-02B83BCD-6621-4F0F-878B-9781A07C996E.htm
I agree 3DSmax used to be the standard but Maya has gained a lot of ground over the years, also why does Autodesk need 2 3D modeling packages geared toward the entertainment industry? They have Inventor for the CAD modeling and they have the 2D market cornered with AutoCAD, why the need for Max and Maya to exist?
Because some studio's use 3dsmax, and others maya? or XSI, or whatever! same goes for zbrush and mudbox It might do the same thing, but diffrent studio's use diffrent packages. you have to adapt to the package the studio your working uses. they have built all the export tools etc to that specific suite of programs.
I agree with Chillydog12345 andJorvid, and I would also say that you should add variation through use of light color, as well as darkening the scene. Try using less normal information and push your texture sizes and add more subtle color variation to the textures. It looks good for a 3dsMax\Maya render :)
This is common with 3dsmax and zbrush. I forget the steps required to fix the uvs in Max (I should probably write them down the next time someone posts them since this is asked about frequently), but I think the zbrush method is to switch how you're importing the mesh (use goz if you're not, or vice versa)
Maya and 3dsmax are pretty much the standards but, again, the fundamentals are software agnostic. Theres also a HUGE community based around blender with a lot of quality content on YouTube which also helps get your bearings. Once you learn the basics of modeling, it takes a couple weeks max to apply them to a new program
You should watch go through the tuts upon starting the software. It has a page dedicated to your exact complaint :D Sometimes you gotta suck it up and read the app tuts quickly to figure some basic stuff out. You can also change the navigation keys to match Maya/3DsMax.
Hey Jmiles ! Amazing work ! I've a question : How much time did you spend on the armor basemesh in 3dsmax? And all the details on the basemesh ( like spikes, cercles on the shouler, .. ) , after import that in Zbrush, did you keep all as separate subtools or did you merge them together? Good luck for the Retopo :-)
prebaking (or handpainting the lightinfirmation) has been pretty standard a while ago and still make a lot of sense on weaker systems. @op: you can definitely do this in 3dsmax, in ddo you could fake a lot using objectspace normals as masks and fake directional light this way. not sure if it can bake in matcaps/cubemaps.
TexTools for Blender actually supports mutlie UV islands, just select multiple edges. There are some other tools in there as well such as the Sort Horizontal and vertical which will automatically align UV islands by their bounds to be most compact and then sort them by size. Other tools like the Align Tools behave…