fooli started noticing that 3ds doesn't save smoothing groups very well, but using the panda exporter mentioned on the dev page and exporting to .x straight from max tends to make things muuuuch nicer.
sadly, the model converter doesn't always like reading panda-exported .x files, so you'll still need something like deep exp to open the .x and resave it (sometimes you have to save it as a different name).
the results though, as far as i've seen, are a billion times better than exporting the old max-->3ds-->x-->atm way.
well, I'm still tweaking with the tex. The side and front are both photos, but I think the side is the only thing that needs changing, I also havn't converted yet.