[Toronto]

I'm gonna take a guess here.

First off, the .3ds file format should be banned from the planet.

Texture names and material names must be less than 8 characters long.
When I map an object, and the material name, or the texture name (eg. airplanewing.bmp) is longer than 8 characters(8char + 3char for the file extension), I lose the mapping and the material name gets changed when using the .3ds file format.
This is why many are crying out in the night for the ability to import/export using the .dae collada format ............... please I beg of you ............. give us the ability to import/export via collada.
Also, the .3ds file format has a nasty way of screwing up the smoothing on your mesh as normal information gets lost.