Interested in Modeling

[Nelzie]

I have some CAD experience and have also played with some modeling in the past, using Caligari 3.

Right now, I have started playing around with Wings3D, which can export to 3ds format, but I am a little stuck as to what to do after I develop a 3D model.

In Caligari, I could toss on some premade existing textures as well as create and import my own. I am unfamiliar with how to do that in Wings. I also understand that there is supposed to be some method of "flattening" out a model providing an unfolded version of a model that I could then import into Photoshop or another such application and then paint textures on top of that.

I'll post a few rough sample models after I get a better handle on everything that can be done with Wings3D. In the meantime, can anyone point me to any information on what I need to know for texturing models (and maybe about proper scaling to existing Freelancer models. I wouldn't want to make a "Fighter" design and have it end up larger than a battleship or so tiny that it appears to be 1/10 the size of the smallest fighter ingame.)

Thanks for any assistance!