Sorry, this has surely been asked millions of times but are there any free downloadables maya 3DS exporters? Or any other ways to create freely .3DS files using maya? thanks

Nope no exporter i know of But wait autodesk just acquired maya so one wood think a export plugin is in the works lol
if you need to get a file from maya to max FBX works fine...http://www.alias.com/glb/eng/products-services/product_details.jsp?productId=1900004