I am planning on refining my 3D model of a cathedral and sell it. I just don’t know which export type is the best export in regards to textures etc. I am a complete newbie to Blender, but I managed to create a cathedral as my first project.
I want the object and the textures to be seperate. Is a 3ds model the best thing, or should I use other versions? It should be compatible with most 3d applications, not just Blender.
Forget .3ds, it has limitations.
.obj files can be used in just about any application.
.fbx is also popular but for all files check them by opening them in another application first
yup, .obj for sure.
.x3d (standardized)
.dae
.obj
.stl - if needed
.fbx is very proprietary and not as good as the other ones and .dae (collada)
Not to forget .blend !
More seriously, it seems .obj is the way to go. But isn’t the lack of smoothing groups in .blend a problem ?
I mean, we use edgesplit modifier, but it split edges and changes the geometry in fact…
@philosopher
Indeed I agree with all other friends here.
But, you may have in mind some SketchUp compatible format.
In this case, you have to export in 3ds format. The only format that works predictably in SU. (a warning, 3ds import is broken under SU8, better use SU7)
Limitations:
Thank you for your suggestions. I think I will try out the OBJ then.
OBJ as this is the most stable format and it offers good texture and geometry support.
I have few clients who constantly have issues with different 3DS file versions so I would not use that one.
OBJ is anyway like the JPEG for images.
jpeg? so you mean it is not lossless? i think you mean the compression methods used?
He meant as being “standard” the way jpg is so widespread
Nearly every 3D application on the planet has a OBJ import/export
x3d is also a standard (and collada .dae)
(.obj is indeed an open format but I see no information that it is an official standardized format like .x3d or .dae by w3c and khronos)
By standard they just mean that virtually anything handling 3D will open an obj file. Just like any graphics application at a minimum is probably going to be able to open a jpeg.
But they use other solutions to handle these files (obj) maybe and also add their own content into these files 
I like xml based and strict formats much more and they are much more readable (and usable for webgl ^^)
The issue I have with OBJ is to have everything still in separate pieces when importing in Maya. I’ve tried several settings, both in Blender & Maya, but no luck so far.
Had more luck with FBX.
There isn’t one format to rule them all. Most people who sell models provide them in many different formats, some of them application specific. OBJ, 3DS and FBX are widely supported, DAE support however is usually terrible, so I would avoid it. X3D is a completely irrelevant format, I can’t think of a package (besides blender) that supports it out of the box. Sorry X3DModels, but a proprietary standard that is supported is still much better than an open standard that isn’t - for rigged models FBX is pretty much your only choice
Ironically given maya’s (wavefront) heritage their obj support is poor. they abuse the object and group tags in the format (though it’s been a while for me to remember exactly how. you can do a search and replace in the obj file to change the tag from one to the other to get maya to work IIRC. but blender fbx to maya is a treat these days.
which format is the best to jump from 3dsmax to blender and then from blender to 3dsmax ? and so that we dont have problems with scale?
I was indeed importing meshes from Blender to 3ds Max these days, seems OBJ is the right format, .3ds gives me a weird scale. With OBJ I model in Blender with meter units, once imported in 3ds max i had to resize by 10’000% to get the same measures, or tweak the import options under “scale”.