Also, if you want to achieve the same effect in Max, it's actually really simple: Just plug the texture into an Output layer, and remap the Output like the attached image shows.
Isn't this the same as setting filtering to none?
Not quite. The texture will turn all blobby instead, basically. It *can* help a little bit, because there will be less details to resolve in the map.
That is the problem... in Max, no matter if you clamp the texture or not, as long as you have filtering enabled, it will still be filtering texture at a distance and blurring it, so it will always result in a lot of small overlapping semi-transparencies. So if you have correct opacity map (white and black is absolute), then you need to disable filtering for opacity maps. If you clamp it the way you did, but keep filtering enabled, then it is not going to help you much....
I find that it does actually help a little, in some cases. Not a very big difference though. It's probably better in most instances to just turn off filtering.
