export to .3ds?

I tried this in resident answers and was directed here to find this "exhaustively" shared information.

I need to create some models to be used in another development outside of SL. I personally enjoy creating models in SL over other 3d tools.

Does anyone know of any tools or tutorials that would enable me to export a model built in SL to .3ds format?

Thanks

I don't know of one specifically, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do as long as you stick to prims that have equivelants in Max. Set Max's units to meters, then just copy the XYZ coordinates, rotations, and dimensions to max. My advice though is to just do the modeling in Max to begin with. If the models aren't intended for SL and the project supports regular mesh models, limiting yourself to SL's very limited tools doesn't make much sense. It might be more comfortable to you but it probably won't serve your project very well.

As Chip said, replicating an SL buid in any other 3D modeling program is a fairly simple task. Just copy the measurements, either by hand or with some sort of automation, and replicate the same primitives in your program of choice. It's relatively simple to create a script that could report all the prim parameters in a model, and then put those measurements to use in another program. (Just don't ask me for the specifics of how to it since I'm not a scripter, but I know it can be done.)

You can also use third party software to capture an OBJ of what you're looking at on screen. I'm not going to be very forthcoming with the details of how to do this (sorry), as it's an easy invitation for people to steal stuff, but if you search the Internet, you'll find the tools I'm talking about. Just be prepared to do a lot of cleanup work afterwards, since you're going to end up capturing clipping planes, the sun/moon planes, all layers of the terrain mesh, etc., in addition to your model, and the rotation will be in accordance with your camera when you took the capture shot, not with any global grid. Also, LOD issues will be in effect, so you may end up having to replace a portion of the polygons by hand, and the poly groupings come out really funny. It takes a bunch of work to turn a model so captured into something well usable.

To agree with Chip again, if your purpose is to create models that will as be universally usable in other applications as possible, your best bet is to make them from scratch in Max from start to finish. If you're used to SL's completely bizarre modeling work flow and techniques, it will take you a little while to get used to "proper" 3D modeling. You'll find it's well worth the effort though. SL models are chock full of wasted polygons, inefficient UV mappings, and a host of other problems. They'll only ever work well inside SL itself.