I did not mean for all this to happen. 
You're fine lol, arguments about release dates are commonplace on HLP

To make models, Wings3d is free, good, and relatively simple to use. Once a model is done, you open it up in PCS2 (POF Constructor Suite 2), set some things like subsystems and glowpoints, and save as a POF, FS's model format.
Wings can;t export everything a FS model needs, such as hierarchy (subobjects and parent objects), so I usually have to go therough Blender for that. Blender... takes some getting used to. Some people use it for all their modelling needs because it's incredibly powerful.
To make textures, Gimp is free and as good as Photoshop is once you get used to the interface. Gimp can save as TGA which FS can use as a texture, but for final releases people usually use ATI's Compressionator or Nvidia's nvdxt to compress in a DDS format. (I'm doing that now, actually

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