Update #3
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Pretty neat tut site I discovered recently:[link]

Update #2
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My damn PSU died yesterday, it was some dodgy one which i got with my 60$ case. Since im planning on going Q6600+X2800XTX later this year, i decided to get a PSU which would last for my next pc. I ended up getting the SilverStone Strider 750W (Modular) which is running at the moment. Its pretty sweet!

Update #1
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Link to my Mommy's Site for our kitties: [link]

Some useful tutorial websites:
-----------------------------------

1. 3D

(2D+3D) 3dtutorials.sk: [link]
(2D+3D) CGTutorials.com: [link]
(Maya) Learning Maya: [link]
(Modelling) 3dLinks: [link]
(Modelling) 3dluvr: [link]
(Modelling) HighEnd3d: [link]
(Modelling) Subdivisionmodelling: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Palace: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Total: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Pixel2Life: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Tutorial Guide: [link]
(3DSMax) Allan McKay: [link]
(3DSMax) Neil Blevins: [link]
(3DSMax) ParticleFX: [link]
(3DSMax + Cinema4d) Stuve Animations: [link]
(3DSMax + Textures) Poopinmymouth: [link]
(Cinema4d) Maxon: [link]
(Rhino3D / VRay) Aversis: [link]
(Mental Ray) Jeff Patton: [link]
(Mental Ray / VRay) Hao La's Portfolio: [link]
(Modo) Vertexmonkey: [link]
(UVW Mapping) Waylon-art: [link]
(VRay Shaders) ???: [link]

2. 2D

(Concept Art) Conceptart.org: [link]
(Game Textures) Pixelmorgue: [link]
HDRI Andrew Whitehurst: [link]
(Metal in Photoshop) Psolver: [link]
(Particle Effects) Particle Illusion: [link]


TIP SECTION:
----------------

- For pipes and stuff you can just use splines and define the number of sides / thickness of it.
- The "Connect" (and pinch/slide) tool is great for splitting polygons into 2, 3, or more segments evenly
- Chamfer is a great tool for rounding edges (on corners as well as turns, for example you want a 90 degree pipe joint, create a box and move one face perpendicular to the other then connect the edges (1 segment) You can then give the middle segment smooth interpolation by chamfering it.
- Using smoothing groups helps you get a soft lighting effect even if you have low polys (i like to use low poly because it is faster to render/easier to texture)
- Easy way to get lighting done is just use a skylight + default scanline renderer (+light tracer) with HDRI projection from the skylight
- You can turn down the number of rays per sample in your adv. lighting > light tracer for test renders and they will not take as long (i never render 250 r/s until the end)
- For a sharp, defined edge use the Catmull Rom filter (default scanline), Lanczos filter (Mental Ray)
- Assign a key to "Create camera from view" for easy camera positioning
- Editable Poly > Editable Mesh (imo anyway)
- Skylights are non directional, use the Advanced Material Override shader to generate an indirect lighting bump value
- Glow behind transparency plugin can be found at: [link] (make sure you assign material IDs to all objects, and they cant have a mID of 0)
- You need to use shadow maps for volumetric lighting
- you can use "Extrude by normal" instead of by group if you want a more linear extrusion
- Use layers to isolate sections of your scene when they too complex to navigate at a decent framerate
- Fillet selected vertices on splines to smooth corners
- Great smoke material tutorial for max - [link]
- Clone parts of your objects to a separate object by shift + dragging selected faces
- use isolation mode when working with many objects/layers, makes things much easier
- in editable poly you can extrude along spline to save the annoyance of extrude, rotate, extrude, rotate, so on and so on. great for horns, tentacles, exhaust pipes, and many other things.

HDRI Howto:
--------------

1. Go to material editor and click Get Material.
2. Select bitmap then choose the hdr file you wish to use
3. Set your Load Settings (i normally use Real Pixels 32bit) and click ok
4. Set Coordinate mapping to environment > Spherical/Shrink Wrap depending on what you like to use
5. Create a Skylight
6. Drag the Material from the Material Editor to the slot in the Sky Colour marked "None", under the Map tick box.
7. Set the amount of blending you want with the sky colour and the map using the slider (0-100)
8. Select "Default Scanline Renderer" in render settings and use Light Tracer for the Advanced Lighting.

My Texturing Process:
-------------------------

1. UVW Unwrapping

- Apply Unwrap UVW Modifier
- Organise UVW's - You may wish to isolate parts
  of the model which contain areas of interest,
  such as decals, text etc.
- Scale down to fraction of bitmap area
- Export at texture size (etc 4000x4000)
- Rinse and repeat for each object in your scene

2. Texturing

- Open exported bitmap
- Clone the UVW area of the first object to
  a secondary layer and fill the background
- Save as PSD format
- Export all your templates into photoshop

.Generally I work on texturing one
                 object at a time, which is actually
                 quite inefficient, but i like to
finalise a template so i can just
import all other templates and work
on them without having to update my
previous objects with the new texture.

- Add layered textures to your base image
  (whatever details you wish to add, normally
   i use some of the following)
. Fill layer (base layer)
. Darkness layer (helps spec)
. Specular Highlights
. Dirt Layer
. Decal Layer(s)
. Logo Layer(s)
. Text Layer(s)
. Self illumination Layer(s)

  Then i use some layer effects to split my
  texture maps:
. Image Adjustment layers:
* Brightness/Contrast
* Levels
* Colour Balance
  These adjustment layers can let you create
  Spec/bump maps easy, for example
Diffuse = Base layers - spec brightness/contrast
Spec    = Base layers + spec brightness/contrast
SI        = Base layers - Fill Layer + spec brightness/contrast
Bump   = Base layers - spec hilight layer
Opacity = I ususally create new textures for these objects

3. Materials

- I generally use Advanced material override
  with skylight/raytracer
. increase indirect lighting bump value if neccessary

Material Hierarchy:

ADVANCED MATERIAL OVERRIDE
|
|_ BLEND
      |
              |__ Layer1: Diffuse/SI/Bump, no reflect
      |                Specular(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Layer2: High Specular, HDRI Reflect, Bump
      |                Diffuse(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Mask: Spec texture


Feel free to make any suggestions for the Tip Section