Nope. Alt-x is all or nothing. But you can use a shader to do a better effect, if you like. For example fresnel is a great technique (more solid on sides of model, more transparent in the middle).
I think most of the stuff from Red Alert where based on real world military experiments. Trained attack dolphins aren't even the most bizarre example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
You can easly make shorcuts without going to setting if i remember RMB or for example bevel and make shorcuts or something like that and you press button whit one you can sign
Good stuff! Like the design. Reads very well. Would add some edgeing onto the skull. Example Darksiders skulls. Dont have to be so stylized just as ref. hood stiff again!
If I remember correctly, in Mass Effect they don't use particles but the lens-flar actor to make this glowing effect on the lights. There was an example on the map sanctuary of UT3, unfortunately this map is doesn't given anymore with the UDK.
@monster Yes, this and your chamfer example are 2 things that I looked into when I first messed around with the DC mod. I see from the other thread that you've looked into the possibility already.
This is going to be awesome. I'd make a few floating little bits of rock so you've got some of this going on. like it's breaking apart. (this debris is overkill in this example but illustrates what I was talking about.)
Here are all maps i baked i think i used all textur in some way during the texturing process. For example the gradient Texture was a realy good starting point for the Heat map.
Awesome work man, pleasure to look at! Maybe the purples can be a bit darker - gradient from top to bottom at her ribbons for example. I miss some harder shadows (sorry for the vague explanation ^^').
I doubt any of that stuff is his, another example : http://cghub.com/images/view/533219/. (You can pretty much just google image search all of his works and find the originals.)