This happened to me when making the vertex edits for battlefield 64. The problem is anim8tor. I had a problem not much ago in my computer and I lost some data, including the anim8tor I had used previously. Having it again, and making vertex edits, my files were corrupted with infinite planes and so.
I finally managed to fix this by hex editing every 3ds file and deleting some ammount of data of the header. Dasdonkey vertex box uses certain direction of memory in the 3ds file, and for some reason, the files anim8tor generates for me are too long, and the information that vertex box uses is below. So erasing the proper ammount of information makes the 3ds file be recognised.
I'll post here the exact mods I make in order to make them work here if anyone is interested.
Please do.