Exporting workable files to OBJ and 3ds

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I am considering selling my models on a site like turbosquid.com and I wanted to know several things. First of all I’m obviously not going to publish my files ONLY in .blend format because then only blender users (ie usually people who don’t have money to throw around and buy big software like max and maya) would be able to buy them. I have heard that OBJ is like the native format for 3d stuff and that 3ds is popular too (being for 3ds max).

What features of my blender model, textures, materials, rigging etc. carry over in the obj and 3ds? I’ve heard the UV unwrapment does, which is great.

What about when I do an ‘orco’ texture on a mesh, will that apply the same in 3ds max? Will the info be included in a .obj file?

Edges set to sharp, will they appear sharp in a different program?

Will rigs stay the same? As in, IK solvers and such.

I assume procedural textures, like clouds and wood will not be in other programs.

If anyone knows of a list of those which do or don’t apply it would be greatly greatly appreciated! Thanks so much for any help!

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OBJ is a pretty basic format but much nicer than 3ds…

It’s for geometry exchange rather than animation.
It’ll export material definitions for specular.diffuse reflection etc and supports image based textures (these get exoported to a .mtl file automatically when you export to OBJ.

as for orco… I never use that so can’t confirm, but why don’t you test it yourself (export then import back into blender and see… (on export if orco is supported the orco coordinates will be UVcoordinates on import)

for edge smoothing there’s various options in the exporter… the default is what you want most of the time.

for rigs and animation currently fbx is the best exporter (with native suppport in maya/max for import)

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As far as i know “edge split” (sharpness) modifier is not exported as smoothing groups, but just splited into many objects, because that’s how blender actually process “smothing groups”(edge split modifier).