I've been looking, for sometime, for somekind of external tool to convert the 3ds Max file format into a .blend file.

I do not have access to a machine that has 3D Studio Max and I don't have to money to buy a copy. I would like to know if anyone knows of a tool to do this or if someone has created a tool to do this or if it is even possible to do so... I've used the forum search function, before I posted, and it came up empty. I'm just hopeful that someone knows something.

Thank you.

Oh, I'm running a duel boot Win98SE and Knoppix 3.1, but I'm on dial-up with a win-modem, so I need something I can access from Windows that I can transfer over to my Linux partition... well, pick up from my Windows partition.
If, of course, it's a Linux utility and not a Win32 utility.

Thank you, again.

There are a bunch of file format converters for blender here: http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~mein/blender/converters.html

Most of them are Blender Python scripts so that solves the cross-platform issues.

Unfortunatly, I only found a similar tool, but it's not designed to work with the .max format, only the .3ds. What I need is a .max converter.

Thank you, anyway, but it's not what I need.

A .Max file is 3DS Max's native file format. Not only is it closed (unlike 3ds files where the format can be downloaded on any number of websites), the data in the file can contain plugin-specific data. As such, you really do need the full 3DS Max package to understand it.

The best you can hope for is something like a .3ds converter. You can load your .max file in 3DS Max and export it as a .3ds... unless you don't have access to Max, of course. If you don't, (ignoring the question of how you got the .max file in question) then there's nothing you can do.

You can download .max files anywhere that they are posted for download.
I got the one in question from a site like Elysiun, but not, mainly, for Blender, just a general, 3D animation/creation site where people post their work and allow the source files to be downloaded. As far as I know, a .max file is free to download as long as the artist that did the work give permission to do so.

I think the point was that you can freely download the specification of the file format for 3ds, not just the files themselves. You can freely download max files (assuming as you say the artist gives permission) the problem is you can't get access to the information needed to work out how to read them.

Hope this makes sense and I haven't totally misinterpreted everyone...

Neil.

I understand that the file specification is closed... but the BIOS system, in the beginning, was a closed, IBM technology. It took someone reverse-enginnering it to make it the standard it is today.

I know that it's not, in the traditional sense, legal to do so, but, someone must have figured it out by now. That's what CS people do, well, it's what they can do.

Someone out there had to be curious on how 3D Studio Max wrote a .max file and broke down the process just to see how it worked. I would, but I don't have those kind of skills... if I did I would do this myself, but I don't, so I'm asking.

Either way, thank you for your help, I added that converter tools link to my Blender bookmarks