Jeff Ross has a tutorial on his site about baking using proxy meshes....

My problem is I can't seem to find a solution to his technique in 3dsMax (he's using Maya I believe).

Below is the relevant screens from his tut...

The top image is similar to what I can get currently (mesh smoothing/or flow connect with preserve UV's ticked OR turbosmoothing).
The bottom image he has unticked smooth UV's which has given straight edges perfect for baking straight normal edges (rather than the wavy ones!).

Why are you trying to unwrap something that hihgpoly anyway?

That unwrapped mesh acts as a proxy mesh for the baking of the higher poly cylindrical/spherical mesh into the lower poly UV's so that you can get normals like on the right rather than what you'd get baking straight to the low poly (on the left).


It's not for anything I'm working on atm... Just trying the technique out.

Ah right I understand now, I can see how that would be pretty useful on low-res textures.

Clear smoothing groups on the polys, then tick preserve smooth groups in mesh smooth?

Not quite sure i followed the problem

If you are refering to the curve of the artwork in the normal map, this is (guessing) Maya using subdivision surfaces rather than a mesh which is what max is using.
Put a turbo smooth on the max version.

Both Turbosmooth and mesh smooth manage to retain the UV's boundaries, Turbosmooth does a much better job though (keeps the vertical lines straight).
However either method in 3ds Max still created a curve inside the boundaries of the UV's as shown in the image below on the right.

So I just learnt/used Maya to create the mesh/UV's --> still not a max based solution though.

Looks like differences in the subdivision algorithms to me. Would be cool to have that kind of functionality in max also.