Cool man, i can possibly whip up a real quick example if you're still having problems. And tumor, i didnt mean to hate on you or anything i just wanted to get this thread cleared up and get him on the right track.
Good job! You're getting it, this is great to see! I'd make the rim along the very outside edge much thicker, like 2x the width of the inner ribs. Here it looks like 1/2 as thick. As for learning to bake normal maps, I would suggest following the tutorials that ship with Max, for example: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max…
Nice job. The edges are really thin, I didn't do it in my example, but you should make the edge bars at least as thick (if not more) than the inner cross-pieces. Look at your reference again. Also this is the high-poly mesh for generating a normal map, you'll want to use a normal-mapped low-poly mesh in your environment,…
Ok, I have found some more references. I was surprised to see how similar this model is to mine. The only thing is that I don't like how shiny it is. This is more of the material I want... only more high res. I like how it isn't too worn down but it also isn't new. Here is three photo references. I would like to mix the…
Tumerboy: Before I forget, yes, I'm using max. I was able to fix the distortion. But there is still a lot of pink. So then I brought it into xNormal. That made the pink darker. Then I took it into the Nvidia NormalMap plugin in Photoshop. This is what came out of it. I'm still trying to figure out what the random bumps…
The last option. Though you would get a better result if you used a grate design with more of a bevelled look to it, like the Doom 3 examples. Your current design has no "slope" to the cross pieces, so you'll end up seeing only the tops of the bars when it's mapped onto a flat plane.