Check out Tim Bergholz' tutorials: https://gumroad.com/timb He has one on rendering weapons in Toolbag. "Ultimate Hardsurface Weapon Tutorial Marmoset Renders"
I made a short image tutorial for cutting basic holes into meshes. Maybe it will help. http://seanvangorder.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/tutorial-cutting-holes-into-meshes/
I wouldn't be so sure about that :) Assuming you have V-Ray, buy a few of these tutorials. They are AMAZING. http://viscorbel.com/product-category/premium-tutorials/
Go through some free material tutorials on Pixar website. Should give you a good start. https://community.renderman.pixar.com/article/113/bitesize-tutorials-materials.html
Yeah thats the tutorial : http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/materials/metalmatte/metalmatte.html its the good "old" highpoly way.. thought there is a way with ndo in combination of maya and udk
Couple tuts http://www.moddb.com/games/cc-renegade/tutorials/lightmap-tutorial (except don't set Flatten Map spacing to 0!) http://www.translucency.com/araya/
You can see one way to unwrap a head in #Part 09 of this tutorial. I think using cylindrical mapping for unwrapping a head (as shown in that tutorial) is a common method.
Heres a useful tutorial I found on painting cloth, it focuses on getting the folds going in the right direction, may be of use :) http://www.store.forbiddenwhispers.co.uk/freestuff/tutorials/ClothTutorial2.pdf
This guy does lots of 2D tutorials. Might be able to pick up some techniques from the dude? http://jesusaconde.deviantart.com/gallery/ http://jesusaconde.deviantart.com/gallery/33402035/TUTORIALS
Textures are incredibly muddy and the models are primitive. I would recommend racer445's texturing tutorial on next gen hard surface and some modeling tutorials from Eat3d.com