3DS models to SketchUp!

I want to download 3DS Max models from www.3dskymodel.com or other website and use them in SketchUp. How to convert those models to SketchUp format?

Note: I don’t have 3D Studio Max.

.max is proprietary, .3ds is more open, if you are able to save as .3ds, that would work. Also, most sites that give .max downloads usually have alternate ways to download.

BTW, the site triggers all sorts of security messages in my OS. I didn’t understand their download step well enough to know if there are alternate file formats.

Sorry … I am kind of new to this and I did not know that 3DS is a file extension! I thought it is a shortcut name for 3D Studio Max.

So if I understand you correctly, 3D Studio Max has 2 native formats; .3ds and .max
Then how to convert both to SketchUp file?

Also what do you mean by “f you are able to save as .3ds, that would work”?

I am not facing any problems with the site.

I just click on download and that is all

I am not sure about the site. I get warnings.

For .3DS as an extension, SketchUp can import those. .MAX files are 3D Studio Max specific, and won’t import.

I see … so is there a way to quickly convert .max files to .skp files?

hello,

no, since you don’t have 3ds max and that .max files can only be opened by it as colin said above


The downloaded archive from the website contains the max.file as well as the obj.file.
Obj.file can easily imported into sketchup.

Cheers
Torsten

Hi,

I understand that .max can not be opened by SketchUp so my question was if there is a way of converting the .max files to SketchUp format without 3D Studio Max.

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Yes but some models are only available in .max, and others are in .obj and others available in both formats. The models I download happend to be only in .max format!.

The answer to this is unfortunately no. The format is proprietary to Autodesk.

Unfortunately, although SketchUp can export OBJ, it doesn’t import it.

Yep,oob no obj import in sketchup. But there are some plugins like quadfacetools for import obj.files into sketchup.

Thanks guys for your feedbacks.

Well, it seems I have no choice but to install the trial version of 3D Studio Max in order to convert the files to .3ds then import them in SketchUp .

Do you have other choices for where you get models from? Many services give a choice of what type of model you download.

If you do that, you could try exporting to Collada (.DAE) instead of 3DS, especially if the models are complex.

I am looking for furniture models … any idea which websites offers models in formats that I can import directly to SU?

Thanks for your advice … will do that.

3D Warehouse ? :thinking:

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