Sometimes "Free" wordpress themes have nasty stuff injected into them, try the default theme for a bit, or a theme from a reputable site and see if that changes anything.
You kind of answered that question in it self, if the character is always smiling use it as the default expression. Unless you plan on animating the models face there is no problem with sculpting the expression in.
Yes its just the generic/default units in max or maya. but if you make an object in max units and then turn the units to feet it translates to 6 feet tall.
I don't know of a world level setting, but each emitter in Cascade has a maxdrawcount which is set to 500 by default. You can change that to a much higher #.
The rendering path for the camera was set to "use graphics settings". Changing it to Forward made no difference, and Deferred does not work with an orthographic camera, so it defaults back to Forward.
I gave it a go, didn't have any problems using the method you stated. Try resetting xNormal to default settings. *Edit* Disregard, ghaztehschmexeh nailed it.
well when you move the slider, it will always default back to zero. it essentially applies and resets. if there are no changes happening, make sure your tool is not masked out
Its definitely exporting polypaint data with FBX. Did a quick test with default settings & Marmoset as viewer. Doesn't show up correctly in 3ds Max though.