Gah, did you read my remark regarding textures?
The crates are red because I'm using a trick technique in lighting some of the red colored brushes near it (brick walls in the warehouse) which I'll correct when it gets closer to a beta. The crates you use in your examples, do have built in shadows, I think that's not a good thing, they completely lose all depth the second you get along side of them, and when a face is lit, you still see a bad, unrealistic shadow. Without bump mapping it would be impossible to get the illusion I want for the crates, other than modeling them all out, which is looking like a good option at the moment.
I admit, the CTP is pretty much in need of re-texturing, when I started the CTP I knew nothing about making game textures, and within a few weeks I was merely taking photosourced images and touching them off by offsetting and cloning, which makes me laugh now, no wonder they're all so bad!
edit: here's the brick style in mind for the warehouse