This...is great. Really helps - thank you!

I'm a little bit late with the reply, but for future reference, here's the gist of everything:

Wallworm acts as a one-stop shop for making a model from 3ds Max for SFM. It makes the MDL and everything, exporting your model and the textures. It turns into
1. Make the model in 3ds max
2. Use the script to export material and model to SFM's usermod/content folders
3. Profit

You will need Wunderboy's MDL exporter installed and all the WallWorm scripts properly installed. Whilst there are many tools included in the DL, only scripts I actually utilized were install (the settings script), wallworm_model_tools (main export window), and wallworm_material_merge (which is used to combine all materials and maps into one targa file per object, which is necessary for the export to work).

I recommend looking at this link in order to map all your paths right for SFM: http://www.wallworm.net/index.php/topic,351.15.html

I'm a complete novice at it; although I have my model and everything compiled, and the model works in SFM, I'll admit I can't exactly help you further than that. (example: transparency issues) But hope that link at least gets you started.

This is fantastic, in a horrifying kind of way.