This was a wall of text but it seems after 4 hours or so of error checking i have one idea; per chance are you using the JULY build of UDK? If so it explains a lot of my issues with getting the darn thing to work!
From what I see, the explanation and the error is this: You plugged the opacity mask into the mask that drives where to change the opacity(mask). This isn't used to tell the actual opacity of the material, but it tells where it will be blended. I could be wrong though.
I vouch for 16 bit too, but sometimes, some engines will spit errors at you if you do try that, so always try and work in a 16 bit environment, but be prepared to revert back to a 8 bit in your final steps.
Tokoya - With a mesh like that, sometimes it is easiest to make the mesh end at the edges of the panels. Just hide the seam inside the area that has a seam on the texture. The mesh becomes a strange shape, but you don't have any errors to worry about.
Ahh I see, it's some excellent work so far man, I think there may be a seam on one of your textures though. I have attached the error for you. Keep it up man, I like where this is going
I had this error as well, when you click on select faces nothing happens. so I go into face selection mode and max crashes. try it and see what happens for you FYI my units are set to meters
Oh, You mean those giant smoothing errors ? :D Or the pixelation there? Working on fixing the those "pulls" right now. As for the pixelation and kinda spotty highlights, I'd assume that is is compression of the normal map into unreal. It is rendered out and and imported as a .tga :)
Okay so this is what I have now (shown below), thanks. I'll fine tune and may change the mirage normal map later. Also the image shows some reflection errors which also I'll work on it sometime.
Phew Finished Lowpoly, still i can see some topology errors that i will fix next week. Im so happy cuz i got the polycount around 8k even after duplicating all the feathers :D
Check youtube they have an answer for this topology problem, I forget the name of this error when I was met with it way back in the day. Maybe google: zbrush retopology holes fix or something similar, best of luck. Maybe someone will chime in.