Metals generally have very low diffuse, most of there surface texture comes from reflections. You shoudn't need a plugin for HDRI's in Max, just stick the .HDR file in the environment slot.
Alright, so I'm using this tutorial: [ame] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-STdbAdLw[/ame] The results were gorgeous, but I want the metal to be yellow. How can I do that? Changing the diffuse color doesn't do anything, it only diminishes the strength of the reflections. Any ideas?