Why haven't Linden Labs made this ?

forum post

After discussion in Live Help, I was pondering on the following:

1) Linden Labs has documentation on the format for prims.
2) Linden Labs most likely has people familiar with using 3DSmax.
3) A lot of SL Residents know how to how to use 3DSmax.
4) Linden Labs has a lot of cash in reserve for "when they really need it"

Why haven't Linden Labs developed, or comissioned a plugin for 3DSmax to export straight to the native format, getting around the LSL method described in my post.

As I mentioned in the Live Help chat, "simply" (not taking into account the talent required to develop it in the first place) releasing the plugin, and an API/documentation for it would allow talented residents to do some guesswork and mashup code from other sources to make a semi functional offline editor for SL avatars, scripts, and sims.

PLEASE at least make steps towards a Linden Labs built or commisioned plugin for 3DSmax, if not promising one.

Maybe a more operative question is, "Why hasn't this been made... yet?" The more general issue here is offline backup and import/export of your creations. In that thread you started, Chosen provided a great sum-up of some of the history--and I've seen many threads on this. Please feel free to search for more of them, dating back.

I haven't heard of this being on the development schedule anytime soon, but as you may have heard from Philip's recent Town Hall, we do want to move towards open source and allow those who say: "Hey, I bet I could do that if I had the opportunity!" to do just this.