Technical artist Marius Silaghi who has created some really great tools for 3ds Max in the past, such as Quad Chamfer, and Turbo Smooth has just release a new tool called SubD Recovery which allows you to get the subdivision levels back on a model quickly and easily.
Subd Recovery is a standalone application for recovering the previous subdivision levels of already subdivided meshes. It can recover the exact topology, geometry and UVs of a mesh as it was before being subdivided
There are times when you confidently collapse a model, which looses Subdivision levels forever and stepping back and forth between those subdivision levels is no longer an option.
With SubD recovery as a stand a lone application, you are able to recover the subdivision levels from a model at any time. This will even work on a model that you get from somewhere else, such as a purchased model online, with SubD Recovery you can reconstruct the based subdivision level, or its original subdivided form.
Marius notes that if a 3d model you buy online is subdivided it is almost useless. You can’t edit, unwrap or rig it. With Subd Recovery you can reconstruct the first subdivision level and then do all the above.
SubD Recovery runs on Windows 32 and 64 bit and it uses the OBJ file format for loading and saving. Marius is offering SubD Recovery for €30 around $40.00.