righton, thanks for the info. So with everything being assembled within 3dsmax, are you still able to take advantage of things like static/dynamic batching, prefabs etc?
What program are you using? 3dsmax? Crack open the graphite modeling tools, and check out the branch feature, its awesome for stuff like this. Incredibly fast and organic.
Both 3DSMax and Maya are known to have problems displaying normal maps in their viewports, you shouldn't trust them. I personally use Toolbag 2 for previewing bakes.
pinch it till it hurts baby! Although it might've been better if you started off with a hard-edged highpoly mesh from 3dsmax or whatever prog your using.
chai: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=53986 there should be virtually no differece between mirrored or unmirrored, if done right. I intend on making a 3dsmax viewport shader and tools for it.
same here, using the importer that comes with 3dsmax clean, so i'd say that's the guruware one. but I just imported it as a single mesh and then it worked fine as said above.