I tried using Wings 3D but it just keeps using an increasing amount of virtual memory before crashing after a time.

Blender caused nothing but problems in previous attempts.

What else is out there?

http://www.micromouse.ca/

Try Accutrans3d.   It does a lot of things besides translations...which may be good or simply unneccessary.  $20 shareware but working eval.

Use that other free modeler Blender ...

It can do many in and exports ..lwo 3ds ... etc etc..

I used it a lot to convert objects ..

Chris

You could give poseray a go I now it covert 3DS so it can be used with Daz so it may do the same back or I could be talking garbage

http://mysite.verizon.net/sfg0000/

Poseray can go from .3ds to .obj, but not from .obj to .3ds. :(
Blender can only import 16 textures.  And its interface is a rather unruly beast, filled with errors that appear if try to edit the settings of the .obj object you are importing.

Any free easy to use polygon reduction tools out there?  As in, I load the model, click something, and it doesn't crash, lock up for hours without telling me whats going on, or create a horrible looking image that is unusuable?  Someone mentioned once that if the polygon count was reduced, it might load up.

I assume everyone that uses daz3d or other modeling programs, has something they do to reduce the polygon count to reasonable amount, making it usuable in games.

you tried metasequoia LE yet ?

The 3ds format only uses triangles, so the poly count is going to increase if you convert an obj to 3ds, as most obj format objects are generally made up of quads, but not always. Give LithUnwrap a go and see what happens. It will convert fron obj to 3ds. As far as polygon reduction tools go, to have something decent you'll generally require something other than free software.
If you're talking about really low poly models for games, they are modelled that way from the start. Reducing something like a human mesh to something suitable for low poly game environments would mostly end up a huge mess.
Get LithUnwrap here. For some reason Ithe link won't show up in the post.
http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198

I suggest you read the license aggreement for the models you want to convert. Must don't allow using the model in any form where it could be extracted by others. Even if it has been modified.

LithUnwrap version 1.3 I already have.  And it doesn't import anything, despite what it says on that website.  I downloaded it again, and the .zip file was the exactly same size as the old one was.

I click File, Import, and then I see Skeleton along with UV, with UV faded out, no way to click it.

If anyone knows where to find some decent .3ds or .x models, which I can test things out with, please inform me.  All the decent human models I can find are always .obj.

I believe daz3d probably made its format specifically so it would be difficult to convert to another format.

Huh? If you want to load a model into Lith, you need to use File->Open->Model and you will find that it can open a lot of different formats.
I'm not sure what you mean by DAZ making their format difficult to convert to other formats, but if you're referring to the .obj format, it has been around a lot longer than DAZ and was originally created by Alias Wavefront. It's probably the most supported format in all of 3D.

Wavefront .obj format is slightly differant than the daz3d .obj format.

Thanks for the tip about lithwrap.  With all other programs you have to use the import command, or sometimes open, but with it you click  Model, and then open.

It says that 65535 is the maximum number of triangles that it can import.  So I can't load it up after all. :(

There's a program for viewing and conversion from mootools.com that may still to be free. (photobrowser??)

There may still be a 30 day demo available (which included the polygoncruncher module)