hello, can anyone help me figure out why I am seeing creases in my polygons after using the shell modifier or what I can do to avoid this? I need those polygons to look flat after I apply the shell modifier. Thanks in advance!
This is 'legacy residue' that's been in Max for donkey's years. Some modifiers still do this. You will notice it when you collapse your stack. The base will either remain an editable poly or an editable mesh, depending on the last mod in the stack.
Your polygons are not planar - Shell modifier converts the model to editable mesh instead of editable poly, which shows faceting on non-planar polygons. You can hit "make planar" in editable poly or assign smoothing groups to the polygons to avoid this happening.