I would load .3ds, there is lots of information about how they are arranged and they provide vertices, face data, and material settings. You will have to compute your own normals, but if you look around online you should be able to find some information about that. You can always check this forum, its a pretty common question
i think it is because vertexcolors are computed through material and lightsettings by the renderer. they do not exist in modellers. define a material for each face and the vertexcolor will result from it and the lightsettings. if you dont have dynamic lighting, you could read the lights from the ase file and precompute the resulting vertexcolors.
nevertheless i would recommend ase. it is easy to read and understand and has the same complexity as 3ds i think.
regards,
jan
[This message has been edited by jabe (edited 10-27-2001).]
I understand that the ASE file is less complex and will probably give me all the data that I need however I am still a bit concerned about these colors aer you saying that if I read in the ambient ligh and the direct light sources coupled with the material data then the colours will appear as they do in D Max?