No, this hasn't been forgotten

In light of new updates on Two Way Roads and its promised updates, the rejuvenation of my newest blog, College Station Roads and Retail, and more, I wanted to give progress of this blog. As a test, we are going through a conversion process from a SketchUp document (not mine) which is the ALICO building. If you'd like to know more, the SketchUp link is here and the Wikipedia link is here.

The reason ALICO was picked, is because, first off, it's a cool building that I would've considered building myself, second off, it was a mostly-complete model. Here's the method I used.

First, I made sure I had gmax on my PC, and Blender (open-source) and SketchUp (the regular version is freeware) and I downloaded the model.

Then I exported it as .dae (Collada), the only export available in regular SketchUp. This unfortunately stripped the textures by putting them in a new folder. That was OK.

Blender then did the job of importing the .dae file. It was stripped of textures, but the red ALICO letters were still visible.

Then I exported it as .3ds, through Blender's unfamiliar interface.

Unfortunately, the file is 4KB, which seems VERY low for a 3d model. Hopefully, we could just chalk that up to a few missing walls, low 3ds overhead, and lack of textures. Still worries me, though, as the original was 8.8MB and the DAE was 1.2MB.

We'll need to do some retexturing work anyway for it, as well as a few other things. Hopefully this will all work out.

EDIT: Gah, the 3DS file was indeed unusable through a Mac 3DS tool called "3D Toolbox" (it can read/write SketchUp and 3DS, but I'd have to pay). I found a script designed for 3DS export to a game called "TrackMania. Then I found out that I had to import the script into an invisible folder, or so says this thread. I haven't worked with invisible folders since Yoot Tower.

I might write a tutorial on all this when it is done. Or I can just give up and use someone with a Pro license to port my file.

Suggestions?