Creating models in Autodesk 3ds Max and loading them into Papervision3D

Autodesk 3ds Max (also known as 3D Studio Max or 3ds Max) is one of the widely-known commercial 3D modeling and animation programs. This is a good authoring tool to start with, as it can save to two of the file formats Papervision3D can handle. These are:

• COLLADA (extension *.dae): An open source 3D file type, which is supported by Papervision3D. This is the most advanced format and has been supported since Papervision3D's first release. It also supports animations and is actually just a plain text XML file.

• 3D Studio (extension *.3ds): As the name suggests, this is one of the formats that 3ds Max natively supports. Generally speaking it is also one of the most common formats to save 3D models in.

As of 3ds Max version 9, there is a built-in exporter plugin available that supports exporting to COLLADA. However, you should avoid using this, as at the time of writing, the models it exports are not suitable for Papervision3D...