Hi Martin, Max actuallly supports the 3DS format ok - the problem is more in the 3DS format itself.

The 3DS format is very old and the format has various limitations in - one of the limitations is that it does not have any method in the file format to hold vertex normals.

Since it's a problem with the file format itself there isn't anything that can really be done by an importer to fix that, the fix is to use a different file format does have the ability within the format structure to hold vertex normals in the file.

- Michael