well, i found the noesis tutorial that told you how to export the model as an smd quite helpful
although i often forgot the procedure because there are so freken many folders and files to fool around with and at times i just went to trial and error for the textures

its like.. export smds of these types, then go ahead make a qc file, use that to compile, hope like hell that it compiles, then try to find where the output mdl file is, shove it to where it's meant to go (unless it's there in the right directory by default, i don't remember)
then convert your tga texture file, find where it's output went, make some text file for it, and then trial and error the placements of these files until the texture shows up on the model in model viewer

the best part was when i got a compile error when trying to convert a texture... "BOGUS TGA FILE" or something like that
something totally unhelpful, but i think it referred to the tga file being in the wrong dimensions or something... maybe... it's unknown, no one on the internet knew either

if you're making animated models then... good luck (i don't often say that too)
and.. be glad you aren't doing the programming
it's such a pain when you're doing things that all the teen nerds haven't done before and they get all agro at you for it...



as for my sig... that's all the stuff i do know and have been exposed to at some point
some of those things i was meant to use for a project of some sort, but never actually did, but i did learn a little bit of it
such as Clips, SOAR and FXScript, mainly because those things failed to do what i wanted to do in the short amount of time i had to learn and master it
some of those things i've actually forgotten
(Clips, SOAR, XSLT, CSS, and SQL), the best part is is that all of those things other than CSS and SQL i learnt last year....

none of those things i've actually gotten to the point where i've mastered it to the point where i can produce awesome work that you'd see done by a pro who's been doing it for 5 years. But then i've only had between at least 5 months and 2 years with all that... all stuffed into the past 4 years. What i was doing before that is beyond me...


a side note:
i only got to use Maya for about 3 months between last year and last last year, then uni started with honours and that was too intense to continue with anything like Maya or AE, and during that time i had to learn all those things i've forgotten, but during the year i did manage to sneak it into a few assigments, then had 3 weeks and made the Shinou Gundam's gun, and a week to make the cactuar thread


in all, i've remembered the concepts of each thing, which makes picking up new things quite easy.