Hi, I don’t think there’s a huge quality difference between working with max and c4d, it comes into the end to the renderer that you use, which on both cases will be Corona (I assume, since posting on the corona forum). The engine is the same even if it’s in different modeling software, only the integration with the engine is different.
One thing that may differ, is the way you setup the shaders/materials on your scene and if you are looking for very detailed walls or something, I’ve seen some displacement tutorials from Corona inside 3ds max : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qxoorB8A6o and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQjRUaR7gMQ
Displacement is cool but it might add quite some time on your renderings, depending how far you push it I suppose…
Using Bump map is a bit tricky as you mostly rely on the lights shining in the right way for your details to POP from that… checkout this Bump Map tutorial for Max, maybe it will be something you didn’t test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7WM9nXySWQ .
The reason it might look better when you go closer is that you have more resolution and more rays are concentrated to that area, when you go further away you have less resolution on that area and the rays are not that concentrated. Maybe others can come up with better explanation to help you out decide how to go about this matter, increasing render resolution and adding more passes might help clearing out that area.
I also find this article from corona on how to use the normal map, using the special CoronaNormal node between your bitmap and material :
https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/5000501663-how-to-use-normal-maps-
Best of luck!