Hi community

I've been trying to go through a large number of the sticky topics at the top of this forum but most links are either broken or are referring to past versions of the game. Therefore to maintain my sanity I thought I would just post.

I've been playing the game for quite a while, and have really been enjoying playing some of the mods which people have worked extremely hard on, and thought that I'd quite like to have a crack at one myself. I've got to grips with the way the entity files work and have successfully created new units based on the standard models, however I've come to point now where I need to try and bring in a completely new mesh.

To keep myself within a context, I've based my mods so far on Wing Commander, so have limited myself so far to creating a new carrier: Ranger Class and one fighter: Arrow V. There are already 3ds versions of these ships which are available here: http://wcmdf.solsector.net/ however I'm struggling to understand how to successfully move from the 3ds version to something that SoA can understand. This is purely a proof of concept to start off with as I'm just building my understanding, after which I might try and go whole hog and create a conversion mod. But one step at a time...

I've downloaded, installed, and eventually uninstalled a number of tools as I can't seem to find one which fits the bill, therefore I'm looking for a nudge in the right direction. If someone can provide me with a few instructions, even at high level such as install tool x, do this, do that, then export it.

Many thanks to anyone who takes enough pity on me to respond

Cheers

WKUK