[kingchicora1]

I have just discovered FS2 about 3 days ago. I played it, beat it, and nearly jizzed my pants during gameplay. I have also discovered this website about 3 days ago, and have seen that FS2 can be modded (if you have the knowledge that is).

I do have  knowledge of modeling the ship with Blender, but even I know that's not enough. What I am trying to pose to you is a question.

What is the "process" that you must go through to...well...its hard to find the words to describe how I'm asking this. In the simplist form I can put it, how do you "forge" a ship, then place it in Freespace 2? What are the steps used to successfully create a ship, give it armaments (weapons), and the like, and place it into Freespace 2? I know about modeling the actual ship, yet believe it or not that may be all I know. I am asking any helpful persons out there who can assist me with this problem. Even a sort list of steps is helpful. I have a great idea for a fighter in FS2, yet I have attempted many tutorials involving this and none have proved successful, so I don't know where to start! (Like my Portal reference?) 

[rscaper1070]

Probably the best place right now for you to start is to poke around the Wiki. There's a lot of information there and even though some of it is out of date it will give you a starting point.

[Rodo]

Search "Blender to POF" in the Wiki.

That should help you for now.

A word of advise though:

Don't make the same mistakes I did, to start make a simple model... like a cube or something like that, few faces, then texture it, and try to add turrets or subsystems.
Hell you can even play around with the mirror property, smoothing and all that stuff.

Then after you've played around with that you would be ready to make a model.

About importing the model to the game, note that you'll need a table for it to load, the POF file contains almost all data regarding subsystems, textures, turrets, etc so for the table you can use a simple cargo containter table entry, just to make the model appear ingame, then proceed.

If you have any questions, come back here... there's always someone around.

[PeterX]

First look in to fso-wiki for references first(rscaper said),then make sketches in second,then make a model in third(Rodo said).
In the fourth convert it to pof and do the definitions as tbl/tbm. And then testing,testing and testing again.
It´s in another thing also.
Peter

[Flipside]

My own advice for the best way to proceed is the three-stage starter program

1: Get a cube in game.
2: Put something like a sphere as Lod 2 and see if you can get it to change at distance.
3: Get a cube with a turret in-game.

Once you've got that 'foot in the door', it's a matter of practice from there on out