Quote: "Also look to see if it works with or without shaders."
oh yes, i forgot (because models with wrong shaders appear black, but appear in game). dont simply remove shader in editor, you have to remove model from map & save, close editor, change fpe-file and delete dbo/bin-data out of the objects folder, then reload the model into map again with the new setting to check propperly.
but as said, with wrong shaders and missing textures the object appears pitch black in testbuild. when you load the object and it doesnt appear even as model to place, most of the time the x-file is missing or wrong spelling on it in the fpe-file.