I was a big fan of the grunt model in mass effect 2, even not knowing of this thread, that model still stood out to me in the game.
I got a question though, about this:
You get your maps from zbrush and then texture? What maps are you getting from zbrush? And what are you texturing in max? Your quote makes me think that you render out like displacement, cavity and normal maps from zbrush. Then you paint the colors in max on the low poly model, is that correct? And if so, why not paint the color and texture in zbrush itself?
And do you ever bake down any matcap material to the texture and export that? Or bake down any lighting from anything?