Edition-1: Tips & Tricks

Of course, you can use all effect maps in their original form. But in most cases you may want to adjust the look of the material according to its usage.

The quickest way to do this is to modify the values for brightness/contrast directly in the material editor. A more sophisticated method is to use the 'color map' or 'curve' function (where applicable).

The "Color Map" feature of 3DS Max

Keep experimenting with these settings!

Different filtering modes of 3DS MaxIf your rendering software supports this we recommend to use an advanced anisotropic texture filtering/sampling method. This will prevent the blurring of fine texture details on surfaces with a small angle relative to the camera (see example below). But be warned! Such techniques usually use a lot more memory than the default method (400% in case of 3dsmax's 'Summed Area' filter).
Standard filtering (left) vs. Advanced filtering (right)