3D Studio Max....

Yes I have the program, and I love to use it, I find it a million tiems easier than trying to dance around with the currently avalable in game builder.

But I have a problem here.

See I want to make something in max, get it all beautiful and finished up just the way I like it, but I don't know how to upload my finished product into the game, I have tweaked textures and objects that I would adore bringing in.

Am I stuck not being able to import these objects? Do I truely have to learn the in game builder and work with it?

Basically, yes. There are importers but they do it by creating tons of prims to simlate the ones in 3DS that SL cannot do.

so in theory I would keep the models of course as simple as possible with basic shapes and dimentions, but how does one import them after? just grab the saved file with the L$10 import?

See this thread:
/120/0c/33323/1.html

Basically, every poly in 3DS will become a prim in SL. In SL, we have prim-limits relative to the amount of land you own, per sim. A typical 512sqm. plot allow 117 prims. An entire sim allows something like 15,000 prims. So, a high-poly 3DS model, would be difficult to keep rezzed in SL (prim overflow will cause the object to either fail to rez, or get returned to you inventory very quickly).

If you can master 3DSmax then you can do SL, easy. I managed the other way round, with limited 3D experience, and found 3DS a pain *only* because it was different. Get your mind into the mindset of the software and it's simple. Swings and roundabouts. Possibly. Or peas in a pod. Apples and pears. Or choose your own metaphore because I think it might be bedtime in Erinland...