Well I installed Gmax and it works with the toolkit. It is as you say "a basic max program".
I have exported/imported certain files as .3DS and it seems to work.
Now its all about learning the BFtoolkit. How texture layers work, how to assign proxy meshes. placing bones. How to open existing BF models in gmax ? I read something about "extracting from RFA"? Because the moddels are saved in the actual map file? So basically i need to do a extract all so that i have a library.
edit: how do .sm files get assembled? any tutorial about this?
I work for a architect. Doing visual presentation in autoCAD and 3ds max (2012).