Use the 3ds format!
Texture files must be in same directory as the 3ds file.
Texture file have to have max 8 digits names.
3ds file, when a single mesh is included has to be less than 64K faces.
However, 3ds file may include lot of groups-meshes, each of them less than 64 K faces.
Under macOSX, in newer builds of SketchUp8, 3ds importer is broken! I wonder when devs will have a look on this. I import using SU7 free.
You may face difficulties related with the scale of the model, in general, make it 10x bigger before exporting.
After you successfully have imported the 3ds, with UV textures, you can still edit the texture file (probably using Ps or Gimp)
In cases like using png transparent textures for leaves-foliage, you'll have textures assigned on the outer face-normal. Use the "UV toolkit" plugin to "frontface to backface"
😉
