i came across foundation3d.com (
http://www.foundation3d.com/index.php?categoryid=38&p13_sectionid=91)a while back and they have many excellent models including a lot of sci fi ships. now i am a blender user, and when blender imports a lightwave object(.lwo) all the textures are lost. i would assume that, as .obj is a fairly universal format, lightwave will export to it whilst preserving all geometry and texturing. can someone who uses lightwave please import a few of the models( i will specify which if anyone agrees to help, you may do as many or as few of those listed as you wish) on foundation3d into the program and export them as .obj s for me to import. as long as texturing and geometry is preserved i am happy(p.s. please ensure that where the model is divided up into a number of objects in light wave it is still divided up into those same objects in obj). if anyone is willing to help please post here or PM me once some kind person offers to perform the process i will tell them which models i want converting and also we can discuss if there is anything a novice 3d "artist" like me can do in return if you wish. thank you for reading, please help, thank you again.
if you have any issues or problems regarding this please PM me or post here.
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https://www.lightwave3d.com/try/
It's fully featured, it just has a 30-day limit, more than enough time to convert a few models. And, if that expires, there's also a free trial of AccuTrans:
http://www.micromouse.ca/
I haven't used AccuTrans to convert Lightwave to anything, but I know it can convert TrueSpace models to Lightwave fairly easily, so I don't see why it can't convert .lwo to .obj. Also, it's only $20 (USD) to obtain a license for AccuTrans, which is fairly cheap. (though, I would suggest the trial first to make sure the program fits your needs)
still hoping someone may perform conversion for me, thanks.
And, if you can't be bothered to at least try to do this yourself, why should somebody else be bothered to do it for you?
also the LW demo is tiny, only takes a few minutes to download and install
p.s. what about .3ds with the textures if the files are not too big although on my computer blender crashes if i try to import a .3ds file of over around 10 Mb
Ah. Well, in that case, one would probably be better off using something like AccuTrans. It probably creates .mtl files. I can't say for certain because I've only ever used it to export to .lwo format. Too bad it doesn't export to Blender format, then you could skip .obj entirely.
Yeah, that's a bummer. You've got to pay big bucks to convert Max files. I'm also surprised that it doesn't support Blender format. Max I can see, that's a proprietary format. Blender is open source, there's really no excuse for that.
you will have to rebuild the surfaces no matter what, but mental ray can handle most common things LW nodes can do, and LW can handle pretty much everything mental ray can do
ANYHOW if fbx is used right you should at least retain some materials but most important you should be able to export out ngon surfaces sans all the triangulation mess that obj and 3ds makes. Materials always suffer in conversions, just as default expect none of them to transfer.
It is beyond me why you did not ask there instead of leeching down assets then coming here to ask for help. F3D has a very large LW user base.