Blender to T3D ?

What I'm looking for is a simple, step-by-step how to get a textured model from Blender to T3D. I'm fairly new to both platforms, and following the tutorial over at Biomass is way too deep for me to follow (apparently) 'cuz I still can't get it to work. Something more along the lines of Steve's "Simple FPS Tutorial" - I was able to follow that easily from start to end.

I'm using Blender 2.49b ('cuz I need the Nif scripts - btw I tried the old dts export scripts but they interfered with Nif, so I got rid of 'em) and T3D 1.0.1 SDK (bought the $99 special a couple weeks back...)

What I've tried, trying to glean tidbits of info from the various tuts/posts I've read so far:

1) Just using the "start up" cube in Blender
2) Creating another cube as a "control"
3) coloring each cube a different color so I know which is which
4) adding a .dds image as a texture to one cube
5) creating a material node with a name the same as the .dds image
6) export as Collada
7) sometimes I inspect the collada file to see if there's a reference to the dds file, sometimes there is sometimes there isn't - not sure what the difference is when this happens. I suspect it's because I'm trying different methods of mapping the image to the object (Map Input tab: UV, Oject, Orco, Glob, etc, and Map TO tab: Col, Hard, Alpha, etc)
8) verify the .dds file exists in the same T3D folder as the .dae (usually game/art/shapes)
9) import the object to my scene in T3D. Both cubes show up, with their respective colors but no texture

So I guess what I'm asking is if anyone can point out what I'm doing wrong, or if there's a much simpler tutorial out there to follow than the Biomass tutorial (which is really cool, but for now it's far too complex for what I'm trying to do). TIA!

Once I figure out simple texturing, I'm hoping it would be a very similar proces to add bump-maps and glow-maps? Are they supported? I haven't even looked into this yet since I've been stopped at simple texturing.