Exporting to FBX OBJ DAE 3DS I am modeling pencil sharpeners. I unwrapped UVs and created a steel texture and a bump map and put it together in Cycles (see attached image). Now I need to export my models as .FBX, .OBJ, .DAE and maybe .3DS, because I want to publish it online for sale, and I want the model to be available in wide array of file formats.

However, when I import the exported files back to Blender, I see that in every case the Compositing of the Cycles materials and links to the texture files are lost, and only UVs are preserved. The renderer defaults to BI. In 3DS I lose parenting and in OBJ and FBX there are scale issues.

I understood from other threads that I probably have to sacrifice this information, and that there is no way to export it. Is that correct? Does that mean that the customer would have to reapply all textures and set settings ( like glossiness etc.)? That is not acceptable.

Is there a way to ensure that the exported files will work straight away? How to preserve the Cycles material settings? Do I have to use Blender Internal to make it work?
This worked for me:
I packed and unpacked the blender file created, corrected allocation and exported materials from cycles into the .OBJ file. I exported from blender to 3dxchange, and the .OBJ file back into blender. The file retained the correct materials. As long as you create the textures in the same directory when you unpack the file, it seems to work.

When exporting alpha YAY, it took me a while to find this solution and it turned out to be simple.