hi and thank you for your efforts =)
for 3dsmax there are a few tools linked here :
http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/OGRE_Exporters
so far i've only used blender, but i think it'll be similar in 3ds.
in the blender exporter you can specify an output folder, and it creates a ogre.mesh and a .material script, and copies the used textures there.
It'd be good if you could prefix names (material,texture,object...) with the modelname, e.g.
"fern_leaves", since they have to be unique across all models when they're loaded ingame.
I haven't tried exporting animated models yet, but i think it should work similar.
a bunch more links that might be interesting :
http://iris2.de/index.php/Model_Hotlist (list of needed models)
http://iris2.de/index.php/Art (a few hints on how to get orientation/position right and how to test static models)
http://iris2.de/index.php/3D_Modelling_Tips (a few notes and links)
http://iris2.de/index.php/Static_3D-Models (old, probably obsolete)
to test character/animal/monster models see :
http://iris2.de/index.php/CharacterModelOverride
as for modelling itself, that depends on the modelling tool you're using.
for blender there is a guide here :
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
i suppose there'll be something similar for 3dsmax
was that what you need or what kind of info are you looking for ?
sorry that it's all a bit messy, we'd really need someone to clean that up and organize it better, we're rather understaffed =(
Anyone interested in helping here ? =)
what kind of info do you need most, and how important is it to test your models ingame ? is the debug mode enough or would you need better tools here ?
could you point me to one of the outdated tutorials that bothered you please ?