Nice work...I did this last week.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=t7ENobuS7a8 Quickly mock up in Max and detailed in Zbrush and then I'll baking back down....Zbrush can make it easier to get some character into your model, especially with your skull, but depends on what you're using it for....
I think it would be best just to get used to the standard Blender hotkeys. There's a lot of good tutorials out there that use screencast keys (I recommend Blender Cookie and BlenderGuru). Once you get used to it, you can model quite quickly. This probably doesn't help much, but here's a comparison of Maya and Blender:
You should watch go through the tuts upon starting the software. It has a page dedicated to your exact complaint :D Sometimes you gotta suck it up and read the app tuts quickly to figure some basic stuff out. You can also change the navigation keys to match Maya/3DsMax.
I upgraded today to Blender 2..79a and it turns out that it references the same 2.79 roaming folder on windows, which makes it seamless for me. Tip: If you want to locate the roaming folder quickly run %appdata% in the address bar (Win + E) or in the run command (Win + R) All addons and configurations are stored in there
Lods are the answer if you want them looking good up close - a few thousand tris isn't a problem on most hardware provided you drop it off pretty quickly. You could try being clever with parallax shaders etc. But the cost would likely be a lot higher than just modelling the details
I've made the details of those wood panels at the bottom at the wall in zbrush, while I was in there I just quickly sculpted those raised parts. I also have a damaged version, the damages were also sculpted in zbrush. Some other angles: Ignore those edges that don't match, It has been solved.
@OtrickP Thanks for the compliment :) I can see the few areas now. I only added s few quick omni lights and enabled viewport rendering within max to quickly get off a few screengrabs to post. I'll have the turret done soon(tomorrow hopefully) and I'll clean up the blending.
Say what!? I played on survivalist and had my ass handed to me on a regular basis. I eventually had to change the difficulty to normal in order to finish the game. God, I'm such a noob :( Anyway, awesome game with shitloads of wows but the story quickly goes downhill and had me ignore it entirely by the end of the game.
Its common to also use already existing props and quickly scale them if needed, even if it wont be the final version of a prop, having a ladder or stairs, or something else in place allows the designer to visualize the map a bit more and allows them to run around and get a feel for whats working and what needs tweaking.
Hey look! In the distance-- more huge WIP, uncropped, uncleaned sketches! (If I knew it was a problem, why didn't I crop them!? - 2018 Bagel) These are for a commission, though, so I'll be finishing them up quickly. Might get back to finishing up my PETROL/BLOOD entry once I've done this.