Max had been long known before for crashing custom/explisit normals after even a slightest tweak. But recently Autodesk fixed lots of that as far as I know. Maybe it's just people still think it's safer not to rely on explisit normals . From my quick test reset transforms and scale doesn't spoil explisit normals at all.…
SOLVED: Its because your model was export from blender, with old modifications. What do you need to do? In 3ds max firstly, you need convert your mesh with (editable mesh) to Edit Poly? then your model will be a correct smoothing groups. Cheers :)
If I understand it right it works really for random sells of random items . Not a sustainable business model even for sole person really . If you work for a game project of those that usually take more then just a year you will have to buy full license after first 100k you gross earned . If not that 'per project '…