I found a few really nice freebies on turbosquid, but they're in .max format - poser 6 doesn't import this type and neither does Poseray (was the first place I checked). Does anyone know how to/where to convert it to .3ds or compatible poser objects? Thanks.

Just enjoying the Vue. :0)

You have to have 3dsMax to open it - no way around it.

Maybe a friend could do it for you.

LOL, I downloaded some freebies from there last night and was wondering the very same thing!  I even tried Poseray too!

I ended up deleting the files from my hard drive because I couldn't convert them.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi

Yeah, MAX is a proprietary format that no other software is written to read. Somewhere along the line, 3D Studio change hands, and changed file formats; files ending in 3DS can be read an imported by most everything, and MAX can't. I've alwasy been a little surprised that no one's ever hacked the file format, because there's often a lot of good free stuff out there. Could be that it's heavily encrypted, though. Don't know why they did that with their file format, but they surely did.

Attached Link: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5972446

Download the 3ds Max 30 day trial and use that to convert.  You can request the 3ds Max trial download from the provided link. This is a full working trial version.

Although the MAX format can contain polygon meshes it usually describes scene elements by using modifiers on basic shapes. This makes a converter self defeating since it would be doing most of the work that 3ds Max does on restoring the scene. The files that PoseRay can read are from the older version of 3ds that contained meshes only.

I know of one full MAX converter and it needs 3dsmax to be installed to use its libraries.

good luck

Ask someone in the Max forum to convert it for you. You never know.

Just to set the record straight:

.3ds is the format 3D studio (DOS) used for years. When 3ds Max 1.0 came out (around '94 I think) the format switched to .max which is proprietary as stated above. The .3ds format is barely used any more because it has a polygon # limitation and is restricted to the old 8.3 name format.

The .max format changes with every new release of Max (9 is the current version). This has been their way of forcing you to upgrade all along and it has worked very well.

These guys have been around forever. They have a translator.

http://www.okino.com/products.htm