3DS (Autodesk 3ds Max)

3DS is the binary scene format of Autodesk 3ds Max, born back in the days of the DOS version of 3D Studio. It gave way to FBX and glTF long ago, but it remained the common denominator: almost every 3D editor and viewer reads it, including very old builds that modern formats are out of reach for.

An OSM map is exported to 3DS when you need volume rather than analytics: a rough massing of a block for architectural visualization, a backdrop for a game scene, a quick model of a district for rendering. The format stores no geographic coordinates and no attributes — it is pure geometry that you drop into your own scene and paint with your own materials.

The output is a single .3ds file: buildings extruded from OSM outlines by height or floor count, plus a flat base underneath them. The scene is centered on the selected area and measured in meters, and the orientation is converted to Y-up, as is customary in 3ds Max. Color comes from a simple diffuse material based on the building type; the format carries no textures and no PBR materials.

3DS has a hard limit of 65535 vertices per object, so large stretches of development are automatically split into several meshes inside a single scene. The overall scene budget is capped so the file stays openable: if you need a whole city with all its detail, glTF or FBX is the better choice.