i’m talking of course when you don’t own 3ds max, and Cinema 4D. I’ve tried online converters but they were all bugguey
I might be wrong, but I think your best bet would be to find machine with the software you mentioned and export all your projects to format that is actively maintained in Blender.
FBX export-import between 3DsMAX and Blender don’t work very well. Maybe try Alembic (.abc)?
You could try downloading the trials of each application. But be careful Autodesk installs a whole bunch of other rubbish as well. Or you can ask someone on forums related to those apps to convert for you.
Max is a no go unless you own it, old FBX, grab the free FBX converter from Autodesk, that does the job admirably.
yeah i downloaded trial versions of these, but once it expired you’re stuck. i found out how to import 3ds files. but still stuck with the formats mentioned above. will give that FBX converter a try. ty.
Not everything is supported but there is this IO_scene_3ds: Ported 3ds import & export to Blender 2.82
And he is adding more features to it he didn’t just port it as it is 
But is this for 3ds files or Max files?
3ds files, sorry I thought he was talking about max the application not max the file format
Well, Max the application saves as .max.
3ds is just a very old (and these days very useless) file formate used for exports. It used to be the native file format for 3d Studio back in DOS days before 3d Studio became 3ds Max.
It is ancient and extremly limited.
Ah that explains why the task was not as exciting to others as I thought it would lol.
I thought it was perfect for people converting from max
Unfortunately the .max format is a non-open format and can only be opened with 3ds Max.
I agree that it would be great but I doubt Autodesk would want that.
.max is a copy of memory while max is running so don’t expect any other way than max to open such files.
definitely not. at Turbosquid files with that format are countless. actually people who sells files into a limited format are just shooting themselves into the feet
Yes it is very limited. You can not have more than 65K triangles for example. Also it triangulates everything, so no quad meshes or ngons. Object names are limited to a pretty short length, like 12 characters or something.
It is a very bad format. I have no idea why it is popular.
correct me if i’m wrong, but i think max was also Gmax format. which was a very popular program back in the years. Gmax was very popular back then, while Blender was only embrionic
it seems max is pretty much abandoned right now. but you have tons of models available into that format because of Gmax popularity
I think gmax used max files. Gmax was iirc 3ds Max 3.something minus the rendering capabilities. It was meant to be used for gamedev/modding.
Max is far from abandoned. It is a very popular and capable 3d program.
I suspect that there are so many 3ds Files because a lot of people wrongly assume that it is the native 3ds Max Format. Since most 3d apps are able to export to .3ds they put it up thinking that it would be useful to max users.