I'm not an artist and no aspiration to be, but it would be nice if I could at least view the 3D files my artists are working on. I have a couple of free 3D viewers but they just die when the files get complex... I have a 70Mb 3DS file for instance.

Simply to let me view and explore models from common pro formats like Maya/3DSMAX/FBX, are there any great free or cheap products out there? Our pipeline is primarily using 3DSMax but we have some assets as FBX as well. Tools must be able to deal with big/complex files - 1M+ polys.

Thanks in advance.

I'm not an artist and no aspiration to be, but it would be nice if I could at least view the 3D files my artists are working on. I have a couple of free 3D viewers but they just die when the files get complex... I have a 70Mb 3DS file for instance.

Simply to let me view and explore models from common pro formats like Maya/3DSMAX/FBX, are there any great free or cheap products out there? Our pipeline is primarily using 3DSMax but we have some assets as FBX as well. Tools must be able to deal with big/complex files - 1M+ polys.

Thanks in advance.

Did you already give blender a try ?

A few years back yes, when I was interested to try my hand at modeling - I couldn't get to grips with it at all. If I just want to view models, maybe it would be less tricky?

A few years back yes, when I was interested to try my hand at modeling - I couldn't get to grips with it at all. If I just want to view models, maybe it would be less tricky?

Modelviewer is always a broad subject (do you want to view an untextured model or a model, fully textured, with shader and animation support ? ). Blender is still simple, infact you just need to import your simple model and learn how to navigate with the mouse in the 3d-window, when you only need to view the untextured model. Blender got lot of improvements the last 3-5 years.

I don't need super-photorealistic rendering but I do need to see the model textured at least, to check uv-mapping is good and other basics.

I might give Blender another go, it's clearly the most powerful free tool if not the easiest to use.

Assimp has a great viewer tool that will let you inspect your models ( http://assimp.source...ain_viewer.html )

What about this:
http://www.vec3obj.com/
A 3d model viewing/sharing platform for your browser.

.Obj only though...