whenmaking normal maps in max 7 i get shity warped pinching in the maps which makes it look suck, i take the same thing using kaldera and in many fewer steps have pretty nice clean normal maps, why is the max one sucking?

Yeah, this was discussed here (btw, good sleuthing MoP!).
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat...&fpart=all
No solution yet AFAIK, except to use another tool (Kaldera, ORB, etc.)