[blowfish]

I have recently been attempting to get a few ships from the game in 3ds format.  I have run into a few problems though.  The first is that very few free programs will convert COB to 3ds, and those that do, like Blender, often break the textures when doing so.  However, I have found that Blender preserves the texture coordinates when importing, even if it ignores the actual textures.  Is there a way to apply a texture in Blender while preserving the texture coordinates?

EDIT: And if anyone else has another way to get a POF into a textured 3ds file (without spending uber$$$ on software), I would be interested to hear it.

[Water]

What I do is use PCS2 to save as cob then AccuTrans http://www.micromouse.ca/ and save as .dae (Collada)

In Blender import as Collada 1.4.
You will still need to rotate everything. Usually top view 90 deg and then front view 90 deg also.

Ignore the next part unless you want many ships in the same file.
Go into edit mode for one piece, exit back to object mode. (workaround) Hit Ctrl-L and link to Scene. then you can delete empty scene and Scene001.

Oh and make sure any pcx and dds files are converted to tga, jpg or bmp before you import into Blender.

[blowfish]

Thanks for the response, Water.  I'll try that.

EDIT: $20???  Is there a free solution?

[Water]

EDIT: $20???  Is there a free solution?

Well I haven't found a good free solution. I did notice that unlike 3DExploration it kept working after 30 days.

[blowfish]

Well, I guess it wouldn't be the first EULA i've broken...