   Exporting from 3ds Max
  Hey iv'e been playing around a bit with autodesk 3ds max 2010 and i want to try and drop a model into an openGL application but im unsure how to go about it. Iv'e spent the last hour (possibly 2) poking around goggle on how to load 3ds files into a program or even how to write some kind of exporter, iv'e tryed to use lib3ds but theres not much documentation on how to use it.does anyone have any idea how to do this... also 3ds max looks like it can export files in the following file types so if theres a better way to load models in one of the other formats let me knowFBX3DSAIASEATRBLKDAEDWGDXFDXFHTROBJSTL   
  Well, ive tried Obj, .x, Collada and FBX. And in my experience I found writing my own exporter to be the easiest method, as you can write it to export data that can be read straight into your engine, without having to do custom conversions that maybe be necessary for other formats into your engine.It was recommend by someone else to use the base 3ds Max Sdk for this. But I found the IGame 3ds Max extension to be very quick and easy to get up and running.For me the IGame sample is found hereC:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2008 SDK\maxsdk\samples\igame\exportI believe they changed the name to 3DXI.   ;  If you are sure that you'll always use 3DSMax and only 3DSMax, then writing your own exporter is indeed a viable option. But as soon as you want to use assets from the net or assets which team members create for you, you can't limit yourself to a single modelling package anymore. That's where common 3D formats like the ones you named into play.OBJ is simple to read, but limited in its usefulness - it does not support bones or animations. 3ds does, but its geometry handling needs some attention to detail. I personally can recommend DirectX .x files, for which a nice exporter named kwXPort exists for 3DSMex. And if you want to kill all in one format, Collada or FBX might be the go. Both are a bit hard to handle, though, due to their vast scope. For all of the aforementioned formats, the Open Asset Import Library provides ready-made loaders and post processing. It already handles the difficulties of the (completely over-engineered IMO) Collada, the various kinds of DirectX .x, all the strange chunks in .3ds and quite a few more. It's my usual recommendation, but I'm one of its authors, so I'm biased :-)   ;  Yea i saw just having a look at the object files as they seem by far the easiest to work with, iv'e only really been working with openGL for about a week so as far as expeirance goes i only really want to pull out colours and polygons and maybe later on textures to make a simple game with, so i dont know anything about bone structure and stuff yet does .obj support those 3 things?   