Hum sounds like me when I got into max/painting
know what your looking for but not where to look let me help.
Sounds like you got a little grasp on max, but lol even when I thought I had a good grasp on max I learned ohh about 10,0000 more tips/tricks/shortcuts from yes
Video tutorials @
http://www.3dbuzz.com
simply sign up (110% free, even video tutorials) and goto your accounts download section and check out the 3dsmax vtms.
3D-Palace (Here is the tutorials on uvw mapping you would want)
This is a veary kool place that offers some very helpfull video tutorials but they do require you to be a member and download a tool that will cue to download what even vid tutorial you want to download from them so it takes a bit of time, but like I said very helpful.
http://www.3d-palace.com/videos_free.php?pid=1
Polycount.com
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/resources/general/video_tutorials/video-tut-list.shtml
These are some koo video tutorials on lowpoly modeling and what some show by example charaters painting tutorials by rob irving (MASTER!)
http://www.3dlinks.com/links.cfm?categoryid=13&subcategoryid=105
This is the most awesome site for hand written tutorials that require you to exspand most of your ideas upon what they show you, BUT THERE ARE A TON just scroll down past the 3dsmax dvd lesson ad thing.
http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/tut3ds.asp
some intresting tutorials to exspand your ideas upon.
www.copernic.com Download the free version.
Besides google.com for some awesome searches for tutorials; copernic
searches like 12 search engines at once for you and I think you can add more engines for it to seach.
Hope this help ya.