Thanks for the responses, glad to finally start to give something back.
This is how we all got started.
Glad to have you on board. If you haven't already, start reading up on the FS Modding Portal and make sure you have the tools you need: at a minimum, a VP extractor and POF Constructor Suite 2 (PCS2) with Collada support. You can learn a lot just by poking through a ships.tbl entry and a POF, seeing what information is associated with which and how it's put together.
1. The LOD part is something I have often heard about in the forum, but still have little comprehension of.
LOD stands for
Level of Detail and refers to the lower-poly meshes that the engine switches to as distance increases. If you play the game with 'model detail' set very low, you will see a lot of 'popping' as models shift from high-detail when you're close to low-detail as you get farther away. A FreeSpace model needs to include all these models with proper mapping and hierarchy; there's usually four with LOD0 being your primary model, and the rest done after your mesh and mapping are finalized. LOD1 is used in the HUD target view and should be optimized enough to look decent at that size, LOD2 can be the retail mesh, and LOD3 is a very primitive lump for extreme distances. A good rule of thumb is to step down your polycount by an order of magnitude for each stage, e.g. 50,000 poly LOD0, 5,000 poly LOD1, 500 poly LOD2, 50 poly LOD3. Making debris chunks is usually also done while creating LODs.
2. As far as UV's go, my main experience with them has been the Auto UV feature in Maya before I sent it to be painted in Mudbox. My forays into true UV unwrapping are pretty limited so far, so whatever I model will likely need help to UV map and fix LODs.
There's more to UV mapping than I can discuss here, without even venturing into texturing. Everyone has a preferred workflow and we'll be happy to help you as you start getting into it.
3. My design skills are also pretty limited, as this course is my first foray into art since pre-GCSE 16 years ago. Any source material such as original concepts would be helpful. Lacking that, anything that others might have posted in the forum which could help me construct a model sheet to work from.
You've got things backwards. This is a hobby for all of us; if anything, working on FreeSpace models will help to develop your design skills! Be fearless, remember that we started with INFR1 where
a tile-mapped stretched-out Osiris the size of a superdestroyer was considered acceptable for public release. You'll get great feedback, and anything that has potential someone will be willing to help you finish. It's not unusual for
half a dozen people to collaborate on a finished model. As far as inspiration goes, you're free to browse the Wiki for
User-made ships and the
official concept art.4. Would I be right in thinking that triangles are the preferred method for the engine? My modelling lecturer has been preaching quad modelling only, so this has been my go to until now - can I model in quads and convert to tris later?
Quad modeling might work better depending on your workflow; I prefer using tris but that's because I learned my technique ten years ago when polycounts were much lower and optimization was critical. You can absolutely triangulate before you export, just check that all your nonplanar quads are convex or concave for their surface.