As someone that has used both GIMP and Blender extensively, I must say that Blender is functionally much closer to its commercial competitors than GIMP is to Photoshop. So don't let your experience with GIMP scare you away from giving Blender a shot.
No not seamless anyway, the only way to get a similar functionality is to re-project the Zsphere model onto your imported mesh after every external edit. People do this sometimes as a sort of quick retopo, but only once when the mesh is nearing or at its final shape.
Congratulations, you achieved the bare minimum to be functional at your job. Expect nothing less than mockery and ridicule if you fail to achieve the bare minimum. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to the theme park where I'll be congratulating everyone that is taller than the sign.
They just gave it high amounts of noise specs tiles and boosted up the bloom...I don't see any distortions in the 3rd image, which ice usually has naturally. Also, fog... Which reminds me, did you try the distort function in UDK?
Yes there's a lot of variety inside Blender, it's fun to create your own workflow with it ! As for Level Design, you maybe need some archi function like the one hidden in the View (N) panel : The user base is mainly on BlenderArtist, but there's also lot of knowledgable people here :)
Yo mama is so fat that FFD4x4x4 modifier does not help with her diet. Yo mama is so fat she needs to use Bend modifier to reach down. Yo mama is so fat she must use snap function to position herself on the couch.
Are you sure about that ? Because I can import obj files and export them without rescaling (even when losing data with dynamesh). There is inside zBrush a function to rescale your mesh to the zBrush regular units but I never seen zBrush doing it automatically.
I just use good folder naming, and XnView for browsing. XnView has a tagging function, but I never bothered to use it since that would require adding all those tags in the first place. Some image browsers here http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTools#Image_Browsing_Software
Looks great, think if you dimmed the two lights the furthest away, or even made one less functional, you'd sell this more. Also, every light has a cluster of insects - could make that into a larger body of mosquitoes with some more organic/sporadic distribution.
If the game have been released just put the work in your portfolio. If someone complains apologize and feign ignorance. There is no functional reason for an NDA to cover your work after a game ships. Being able to share the work you have done is fundamental to your business.