Best Practice

General:

Use 3DS MAX, Vray, RPManager, Deadline, Fusion, Photoshop they are part of the official workflow, if using 3rd party apps make sure it's 100% independent and cooperative with official workflow. (Example: realflow some workstations have it, some not, convert to mesh when happy with the result).

Autodesk 3DS MAX:

Use centimeters as display and system units. Light units keep to European.

Right name base/reusable objects and materials. (like in 

Always use layers and tide them right (like in Layers 101)

Never use absolute black or white in diffuse. Use for Black (25,25,25 or 30,30,30) and white (230,230,230). Diffuse maps can be fixed by adding Output node and rising black dot to 0.1 and lowering white dot to 0.9.

Always Collect Maps (like in Collecting maps)