It's a pretty common problem with glossy materials. simply reducing the amount of gloss based on distance from the camera in your Shader can be quite an effective solution.
try sticking a push modifer on the low and pushing it out by a tiny amount. The wiki is great, you should check it out. http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap#Solving_Pixel_Artifacts
The amount of wear in your textures is perfect - just enough to tell it's been used. Definitely watching this one as well, it's neat to see something so different.
Much better. There is still something "odd" compared to the clay-version, but I can't nail it down. Maybe it's the amount of colored faces or the color shemes.. not sure.
Express is fine, it just has limitations. Community edition is the full professional version, no limitations. It's free for "small teams" who earn below a certain amount.
With 12 weeks? Definitely scripting. It's something I've dabbled in lightly but I simply don't have time to learn it in depth. The amount of utility it offers is huge.
Oh that's awesome! This is why I loved using Subsance, there's such a various amounts that you can do, this looks so cool so will definitely give it a go.
The only thing that surprises me there is that Modo viewport is on par with Blender. :) Max was pushing the same amount of polys 10 years ago as Modo pushes today.