Reference book to buy

You should buy this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Structures-Standards-Details-Architects/dp/1592531938/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296350820&sr=8-1

It's like a mini-time saver standards book. I just got it and it is as advertised.

Very handy.

Freetime in 3ds Max

These are just some random experiments within 3ds max.

This is a sss (sub-surface-scattering) material test. Kind of like skin, or gel of some sort. Looks nice, but takes a while to render and setup.

This is an Ivy grower from guruware.at. Very cool and easy to use. Setup is fast and it generates quickly.

This is a grass test using the particle systems (which are incredibly powerful and pretty easy). Basically model a few blades of grass as simple poly's and scatter them on a surface using a particle system. This can be done for trees, rocks, basically anything.