Hey, Maxxxmodelz!  Welcome to Blender forum!

Very interesting thread you have here.  I personally never used 3dsmax, although I have actually followed some 3dsmax modeling tutorials, in Blender!  It was a little confusing at first, but I eventually got the hang of the differences in the tutorials, and now I'm actually able to follow a lot of great 3dsmax tutorials using Blender with no problems!  Sometimes I even get ahead of the teachers!

Like some of the others here were saying, not everything you have in 3dsmax will be available in the same way in Blender, as you already noticed, but you can definitely model anything in Blender that you can in 3dsmax.  Sometimes even faster and easier.  It just depends on how well you know Blender.  If you knew it as well as 3dsmax, I'm sure you'd love it, and be able to complete any model just as easily.

I don't know how to solve your problem with doing those kinds of bevels.  Sorry, but I can't help you there.  I would model those shapes using different tools in blender maybe, or just go about it a little differently than you might like.  Who knows.

I can, however, give you some advice regarding your issue with the box select, and not being able to rotate the view when you are trying to select things.  Check out this tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-DynRIN5MY

This will give you all the information you need to know about making selections very quickly in Blender!  The reason you can not rotate your view when you are in box select is because the logic to using box select is to make selections from the view you are in!  That's what it's used for, and why it's there to begin with.  Otherwise, some of the other tools to select things are more useful, and more powerful.  If you must move around your view while making selections on your object, then why not use the Circle tool instead?  I know you might be thinking you have to click the C hotkey to activate, then click again when done, and you still can't rotate your view in between, but you actually can!  Check out the tips in that video to find out how!

I'll look around for solutions to this bevel problem, but so far, I've seen tutorials for every kind of modeling issue known to man in Blender, and not once has this held back anyone from quickly generating their objects.  At least not that I saw.  Maybe certain kinds of modeling is much faster in 3dsmax, but don't give up on Blender!  It can be very efficient at modeling too!

Great job!  I never saw this sofa before, and had to google it.  It's a crazy looking thing, but very cool.  I personally love the way you improvised the seats, and tend to agree that the second version looks like it would be more functional.  There was too much space between them in the first version.  Your work is very inspiring.  I can learn a lot just by studying your wireframes and OBJ's, because they always have a great mesh!

Great work, Cybermonk!  Love these kinds of heavily complex objects, with lots of geo.  This reminds me, a while ago I recall seeing a banner advertisement on this site for a really amazing greeble tool that allowed you to add tons of complex geometry to any object with just one click.  I think it was for a different software, but the results it gave were just crazy.  I can't remember the name...

Edit: Oh, wait a minute!  I found it in my bookmarks!  Here's the one I mean...

http://www.code-artists.de/

Yeah, it's only for 3dsmax (of course), but ever since seeing it, I had been on the hunt for something similar for Blender.  I thought there MUST be something like that out there in the python addons or something.  But I haven't found anything to the day.  This is something the Python guys should consider working on!  It would really be a useful addon, and make stuff like this a lot easier.

Anyway, GREAT WORK!

Wow.  So far, I think this look great!  Better than I could do probably.  Maybe some grips on the handle would be cool, but you can do that with nomal maps or displacement I guess.  Other than that, you seem to have a great model here.

Here's a tutorial for making a knot that turned up for another software, but maybe it can be translated to Blender too.

http://www.infobarrel.com/How_to_Model_a_Knot_in_3ds_MAX

If you found one like this which is specific to Blender, please let us know.

What solution did you come up with?  I looked around for tutorials, but couldn't find anything.  I'm sure curves are involved, but not sure how to tie them.

Did Silo ever come out with modifiers as part of its tools?  $40 sounds good at first, until you consider there is at least one other 3d modeling software out there which has way more tools, including a very powerful modifier system, for absolutely no cost.  I'm speaking of Blender, of course.  With Blender, once you get used to the keyboard shortcuts, you can literally model anything with just your mouse and keyboard, and never have to touch any buttons or menus on the screen.  Plus, you have tons of powerful modifiers, which make it so much easier to bend, twist, taper, or deform any polygon mesh much faster than doing it by hand.

If you really don't wanna learn Blender for whatever reason, there is also a nice little modeling software out there called Hexagon, which can do almost all the things that Silo can do, but for half the price.  I think I saw it at around $20 recently, and it seemed to have a few tools that Silo didn't have, like some modifiers, and I think it might support curves too.

Thanks, Heddheld.  I'm really disappointed I didn't get more feedback on the image.  Even if it wasn't all positive, I expected to see some more comments, considering how many Blender users there are on this website.  Oh well.  I'm really proud of the image.  I was never one for coming up with great materials, especially in Cycles.  I found it difficult to even follow some tutorials for materials actually.  The node structure there was all mine.  Yes, I was definitely going after a plastic, artificial look for the pine needles, so I'm glad you noticed that!  The background is a HDRI of a room.  It's not supposed to be "empty", which is why I used a HDR environment, to give it the illusion of a real environment, but the ornaments are intentionally hanging by themselves.  I'm just not very good at scene construction yet.  I can model, but materials and composition are still my weakness.  While I didn't model the main object in that scene, I did model the other ornaments, and like I said, the materials and lighting are all me.

Thanks for giving me some feedback!  I really need it.

Thanks everyone.  I posted my results the other day in my gallery, but didnt get much response.  I guess this kind of stuff is mundane to most users, but it's a big deal to me to finally figure out the material tree in Cycles, and create my own materials, like velvet, from scratch!

I used it on a stock model i found in freestuff, which I thought would be perfect for the shader.  I modeled the other ornaments, but the bells and bow object aren't my model.  They are all my shaders.  I tried posting a small version to the freestuff forum, but was horrified at how the forums automatically reduced my image quality to crap, so I wont post images to the forums again.  It totally screws up the quality.

Please check out the results in my gallery here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2583726

I'd be thrilled to hear what you guys think.  All Cycles for rendering, and I don't know how to do any postwork beyond some color adjustments, so basically all a straight render.

Crap!  Looks like the forums reduce the quality of the images posted here!  That sucks!  I see lots of JPEG compression in my post here, which wasn't there in the original version I saved for the forums.  So pleeeaaase check out the one in my gallery, to see how it SHOULD actually look!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2583726

Thanks again for the great freebie, and hope to see more from you soon!

VERY excited I finally discovered how to set up a realistic velvet material of my own in Blender Cycles, and couldn't wait to share the results.  I used this freebie in the scene for the material I created.  Took me several hours to come up with a good velvet mateiral, and so I'm very happy I finally nailed it, and it's almost as good as the one in the Poser render I saw here!

One thing I'd like to say is THANKS for this freebie, it was definitely inspiring and fun to play around with, and helped me make my first real holiday Christmas render of the season here.  Totally put me in the holiday spirit! Click this to see the big, detailed version of the render in my gallery!  Please comment, as I'm really excited about the render, and would love to hear your thoughts on it!  I think I'm finally understanding the methods to achieving good materials in Cycles, and getting good results on my own, without having to use preset mateirals, or following material tutorials as much.

Some great information here, guys!  Thanks!  I'm putting together something using a combination of the two examples in this thread.  I was really impressed by a velvet shader I saw from a render done in POSER of all applications!  It was a great looking velvet material, and I'd been trying to get that same effect in Blender without success.  Seeing these examples at least shows that it can be done in Cycles!  phew.  Would have scared me if there was a shader in Poser we couldn't do in Blender! hehe!

Another masterpiece - thank you.

Here's my render in Poser Pro 2014, using procedural materials I made for the prop. I would attach the shaders for downloading, but Renderosity made it impossible to do that anymore - I can only give you pictures. Sorry.

OMG!  This is rendered in POSER?!  Seriously, I've not seen a velvet material nearly as realistic as you have done with that ribbon!  I've been working on a CYcles render of this object in Blender, and I've really wanted to do a realistic red velvet.  Your ribbon has put all my efforts in Cycles the past few hours to SHAME!! Your ribbon even looks better than the material in Luxxeon's preview!  No offense, Luxxeon, your renders are incredible, but this velvet material made my jaw drop, especially when I know it's done in Poser.  There's some true magicians at work in this thread, folks.  Wow.

Your models are always done so professionally.  As a 3d modeller myself, at a hobby level, I always learn something new about meshes just by studying your freebies.  Thanks for this!

Well, I don't know how anyone can criticize this amazing model.  The fact you gave this for free is astounding to me!  I've looked around at marketplace and paid models which were only half as realistic and well done as this!  Aside from the human form, food might be the hardest thing to model and texture properly, and this is done to an amazing high level.  Thanks for sharing it with us.