Texturing help for 3DS max please

Hey there, I've been working on a custom model for Sins and after modeling and texturing inside of 3DS max 2009 when i bring it into the game the model just has a black texture with no detail.  I've looked on all the tutorials on this site and tried all of their techniques, all of which seem to be outdated.  I was wondering if there was anyone who could give me some insight on what I need to do to get my textures into sins correctly.

The version of sins im running is 1.19, I have entrenchment but am trying to mod for just original.

Im modeling/texturing in 3DS Max 2009, converting to .obj -> .xsi -> .mesh.  My texture files are .dds from 3DS max, and are named properly.  I'm still a bit new to texturing but I have enough knowledge to get something like this done.

Another small issue that I've had is when i make the mod folder and have everything in that folder and I try to load it, nothing happens and the mod doesnt seem to affect the game. so to test I have just been overwriting the actual game files instead. Backing up the originals of course.

Please let me know if there is anything that can help me out.