Importing Google Earth Sections and Google Sketchup 3D models into trainz?

Well, in the meantime, I've read a lot of other posts about Gmax going obsolete, compared to Blender and other things, and I sure don't want to spend a lot of time with Gmax, just to realize that i have to learn yet another program when 2009 comes out. At the moment I really don't know what to do, other than wait and see what Decapod comes up with

Paul, please

paulzmay said:

I believe you can use Flux Studio to convert from sketchup to 3DS to import into GMax. From there you can export to Trainz. I've used Flux Studio to convert meshes (well one so far) from Autodesk Inventor to 3DS, and successfully got them into TRS.

Click to expand...

Paul, do you happen to remember what particular method you used?

After fiddling, I managed to get SketchUp to export a format that Flux will understand (except I can't use any components it seems), but now that I have my model in Flux (all textures included), Trainz asset creation studio refuses to import it, I get a "failed assertion" every time.

I tried a simpler model, just a box with 3 textures. And Flux does export everthing, including textures, and Gmax will import that, but only imports the shape, does not apply the textures, leaving me to start all over again.