Wow! Yay! Heyyyyy! How cool is that!
Erm.. Is there an exporter from Maya to .M3D? Thought not... Maya looks a lot of fun, but for OFF you'll need gmax or 3dsMax, so same old headbanging and learning the hard way, I fear.
But if anyone's interested in gmax modelling, have a look at Uncle Milton's aircraft building tutorial series. It's for FS9, so doesn't cover damage modelling or LODs, but as a thorough introduction to aircraft building for MS sims, including mapping and skinning, I can thoroughly recommend it. http://www.flightsimonline.com/C162/
Hello bzhyoyo, your colour-coding tip for LOD development (Netwings forum, once upon a time) was an eye-opener for me. Cheers, old chap!